A typical day at a restaurant covers many aspects from inventory check, scheduling, monitoring the readiness and cleanliness of the restaurant, the equipment checks and coordination with suppliers and other branches if applicable.

It is hectic, isn’t it?

It’s something that requires constant attention and continuous work to ensure an appropriate workflow and an outstanding performance. From the front of the house to the back of the house staff and operations, maintaining your equipment and certain operational duties can save you time and cost of repair and problem solving.

What is restaurant maintenance?

Restaurant maintenance is the term that refers to upkeeping the facility equipment and space to be fully ready for servicing customers and fulfilling its requirements. It ensures that there are no technical difficulties that prevent food production and presentation.

It includes various activities such as inspection, cleanliness, hygiene, servicing parts replacement and repair and software maintenance.

What are the main maintenance aspects to follow-up at restaurants?

Health and hygiene

The hygiene is a top priority of your restaurant whether it’s a single restaurant or a big chain. Hygiene is directly related to the safety of the food you’re making and offering.

It includes each step of the food handling, preparation, setup and presentation in the kitchen, storage room, warehouse if any and the dining area. The hygiene covers the cleanliness of the restrooms as well and the dining area. A very important tip is not to allow grease buildups in kitchens.

For this purpose, a proper employee training should be a part of the hiring process. Regular checkups and audits are a must in this case. Several cleaning schedules should be scheduled every day.

Make sure employees have a clear cleaning checklist that they can easily follow and adopt.

The health of the staff is essential as well and is considered a part of the overall hygiene.

This was specifically adopted and followed during the pandemic with the initial fear of virus transmission from humans to food. Now in times of Cholera pure hygiene protocols followed by employees affect the hygiene of food and the safety of your guests.

Pest control is also an essential part of the hygiene and overall customers and employees’ safety that should be done regularly.

Always follow the local health and food safety guidelines.

Equipment maintenance

Cooking surfaces and equipment should be also maintained regularly to ensure its continuous functionality. A proper use of the equipment is what you need here. For example, fryers should be cleaned properly and regularly, the oil should be disposed in the recommended way. The machine should be cleaned with warm water to avoid grease buildup and to ensure a lifelong functioning.

Maintain regular checkups on the parts of your kitchen equipment and electric devices like the dishwashers and ovens to avoid misfunction or breakdowns. The same goes for heating, ventilation, air conditioning that affect the comfort of your guests and eventually the occupancy and the footfall.

Fixing or repairing instantly prevents bigger damage and service disruption so never postpone even the slightest repairs or adjustments.

Safety management

Restaurant incidents are unavoidable especially during a typical busy day. Burns, cuts and slips are very common. Slips are reported to be the highest restaurant injury risks at restaurant.

Floors should be checked regularly for spills and wet risky floors should be clearly marked.

Always check the torn carpet or broken tiles causing trip hazards.

Fire hazards are also possible but with these hazards, prevention is always your best option. Keep your flammable material and open flames or superheated grease under your control to avoid a very costly incident.

As for electrical hazards, always repair or fix any frayed wiring in the building, damaged outlets or connectors, exposed live cables or damaged extension cords. Perform a regular inspection on electrical devices and ports to avoid serious hazards that threatens the life your staff and guests.

Your employees should be notified and trained to notice and check these risky hazards.

POS software maintenance

Maintenance service and support for the POS software is essential so make sure that you receive 24/7 support from your service provider as BIM POS does.

Your maintenance best practices

• Focus on proactive maintenance.
• Train your employees.
• Audit regularly. 
• Choose your vendors carefully including the maintenance contractors.

When it comes to restaurant management and to get the best picture from outside, you need to be taking care of the littlest things in your restaurant and to adopt proactive and progressive management and maintenance to avoid hazards and incidents.