It is not just the food and hospitality that attracts a customer to a hotel or restaurant space. Moreover, the customer is drawn more to the environment, ambience, decor and overall cleanliness and hygiene the restaurant space offers. 

Restaurants and hotels are spaces where visitors come to share important and lasting memories and ensuring these spaces are clean and hygienic is a must to ensure the customer’s safety. Hotels and restaurants all over the world are giving special emphasis on cleanliness and safety of restaurant space. 

A well maintained and clean restaurant or hotel space can go a long way towards ensuring successful business and recurring walk-ins at the restaurants. Here are a few tips to help you maintain your restaurant space much easily:

1. Cleanliness of the Dining Room

The Dining room is the heart of any restaurant and the first area visitors interact with. Strict cleanliness and hygiene protocols must be followed in this area. This not only ensures the safety of the customers but helps build trust with the people dining at the restaurant.

Why is dining room cleaning crucial in the restaurant business?

The dining room in a restaurant is one of the most important spaces where guests and visitors spend most of their quality time. This is also space where major events like dinner parties and entertainment sessions happen therefore this room represents the whole look and feel of the restaurant. This makes it a  valuable space to be kept clean, organised and well maintained.

The restaurant managers should take care and always be sceptical over cleaning the dining room and keeping this a must-do the task for the cleanliness staff. 

Any space that deals with serving and having food, must be strictly cleaned and sanitised. It is highly risky to accommodate any kind of pathogens and risk the guest’s health safety. Especially in critical times like today, where the COVID-19 strain of pathogens is most found on surfaces. Proper care must be taken by the cleaning staff. Regular daily and weekly deep cleaning sessions must be part of the maintenance routine. Major issues like stains, spots and dust on amenities and fabrics must be approached hands-on and there should not be traces of the same before and after service.

Training your staff.

It is crucial that you train your staff by introducing a good training programme which will play a huge role in ensuring a high level of quality hospitality. Restaurant managers must make sure every staff member responsible for maintenance and cleanliness must undergo this session. Such programmes will not only make them more confident but will ensure more practice to perfect their skills and make them more multi-skilled, ready to use different cleaning techniques for different styles of dining rooms and furniture.

Creating smaller training groups is most ideal to get the most of the sessions. A smaller group means more opportunities for everyone to practice, more interactive and ample support and guidance from an experienced trainer in the field.

Finally, training your housekeeping staff will not only give them a sense of understanding on how to organise and structure to perfection but will train them to do it quickly and efficiently.

Here is our quick dining room cleaning checklist

Dust all surfaces— The dining room is a place where there is a lot of furniture and other surfaces are involved, therefore it is important to dust these surfaces regularly to eliminate any further build-up of dust. 

Wipe down tables and chairs— After dusting it is necessary to clean these surfaces with a reliable multipurpose cleaner. 

Wipe down walls and corners in the room— Apart from furniture, cobwebs can accumulate on walls and other corners across the room. These can be eliminated too. 

Clean floors— Clean floors are one of the most attractive features of any room, therefore it is very important to keep a sparkling floor of a dining room. Using a vacuum cleaner to dust off carpeted areas and rugs that horde a lot of dust particles and other finer dust particles etc. 

2. Restaurant Furniture Maintenance

Restaurant furniture is subjected to harsh and commercial environments on a daily basis. Therefore, it is very important to keep a check on all furniture and replace or fix if any is found damaged. Visitors pay close attention to minor details like the look and feel of the furniture, how comfortable the furniture is, therefore it wise to keep a check on all these things to keep the reputation of the restaurant /hotel in check. 

One should be mindful when purchasing furniture for a restaurant or hotel focusing on factors like its durable and quality should be kept in mind. Furniture fit for contract use is essential for the safety of your customers as these are built to withstand mass use. This will ensure less maintenance cost and ensure the longevity of the furniture. This helps in customer satisfaction and draws similar customers. All UHS furniture has been heavily tested for contract use, reducing the worry of whether or not your furniture will withstand the mass usage. Additionally, we offer a whole range of fabrics and leathers fit for restaurant purpose. Here are some additional tips to ensure the longevity of the furniture at your restaurant or hotel.

3. Inspecting your Restaurant Furniture 

A timely furniture inspection must be scheduled at your restaurant or hotel.  This ensures proper maintenance of the furniture and avoids any last-minute hassles during guest arrival or any other important events. Here are a few points you can consider in your checklist: 

• Making sure that the tables and chairs at the restaurant are sturdy and stable. Barstool swivels and glides should be oiled and working properly.
• Personal check of chairs and stools for any wobbles, loose joints must be examined. Similarly, check for tables for steadiness. If the tables or chairs have too much movement or any missing screws etc., send them for repair and get the errors fixed. Also, see that they are levelled properly to avoid any alignment issues. 
• Check furniture that involves any fabric or vinyl surfaces for any rips, loose seams, or tears.
• Segregate furniture that needs immediate attention and dispose of the ones that are damaged or cannot be fixed, to avoid overcrowding of resources and to eliminate any safety hazards like cuts, tears etc. caused due to damaged furniture.

4. How to Clean Restaurant Furniture

Cleaning of surfaces is a simple task and doesn’t require much assistance. But there can be different types of surfaces/materials used as furniture at restaurants which respond differently to cleaning agents. This requires proper information about the type of furniture surface and how it can be cleaned. Cleaning methods for a vinyl upholstered restaurant chair will be different than for a metal surface. Therefore, it is very important to review published furniture cleaning articles or resources to get accurate results and keep the furniture unharmed. Based on this we have put together some tips for each category:

– Based on the location of the furniture: 

• Indoor restaurant furniture: Indoor is more prone to damages that are caused by customers and staff. Scrapes, spillages and knocks are bound to happen most when inside the restaurant or hotel space. This is why it is essential to have furniture that can resist and sustain all these damages in a busy environment. As compared to outdoor furniture, indoor furniture is much easier to clean and maintain and also requires less maintenance. Daily dusting and cleaning surfaces with a damp cloth with the use of a cleanser is enough. 
• Outdoor restaurant furniture: Outdoor furniture is exposed to a lot of harsh elements like dust, pathogens, moulds, heat and so on and hence require a strict cleaning process to ensure the safety of the customers dining on them. It is important that these surfaces are checked, cleaned, and maintained regularly. Use of all-purpose cleaners to maintain these surfaces for cleanliness and hygiene is a must. 

– Based on the type of material of the surfaces 

• Metal Cleaning Tip: Use a soap and water solution to clean any metal surface
• Wood Cleaning Tip: Disinfecting wood furniture pieces with cleaning solutions containing ethanol alcohol or hydrogen peroxide.
• Plastic Cleaning Tip: Reduce or minimise the use of plastic as bacteria and viruses strike the maximum on these surfaces, sanitise these surfaces with all-purpose disinfectant. 
• Stainless Steel Cleaning Tip: An Alcohol-based cleaning agent should be used to clean these surfaces. 
• Glass Cleaning Tip: Use a soap and water solution initially followed by disinfecting with an alcohol-based spray
• Resin Tabletop Cleaning Tip: Use a cleaning solution of detergent and warm water. Scratches can be masked using an all-purpose cleaner and later wiped with furniture polish.
• Granite Table Tops Cleaning Tip: Use warm water and detergent for regular cleaning.
• Table Edges (Wood, Vinyl, and Urethane): A solution of dishwashing detergent and warm water.
• Laminate Tops: A mild soap or liquid dishwashing detergent with warm water.

Quick tips for General Care & Maintenance of hotel furniture

•  Stay away from harsh cleaners and products (sandpaper, hard bristle brushes, etc.) that will cause harm to any of the restaurant amenities.
• Avoid leaving any wet cleaning substance on furniture to dry; it can damage the finish. Always make sure to pat any surfaces dry and wipe off any residue with a dry cloth.
• If you are unsure about the type of surface, use warm soapy water and a clean cloth.
• Tighten and examine screws and also look out for any exposed nails from any furniture every month.
• Any piece of furniture that shows defects should immediately be reported and taken out for service and reported to the restaurant manager in charge.
• When everything else fails, try hiring for a cleaning agency who can take care of properly cleaning and sanitising your restaurant furniture. The prices may vary but do not compromise on any delayed cleaning and maintenance procedures.