Keeping Your Restaurant Carpets Clean – 4 Top Tips
There’s no doubting that a restaurant carpet, chosen to complement the décor, can help to create a warm, welcoming environment for guests. However, if not looked after properly, your stylish investment will quickly become a trap for food, grease and dirt.
And while patterned restaurant carpets are designed to mask some spots and marks, if left unchecked poor hygiene habits can quickly lead to the growth of bacteria and mould, resulting in nasty odours. Not so welcoming for your customers!
But don’t worry; help is at hand. We have four ways you can keep your carpets smart and your customers complementing you on your cleanliness.
- Clear spills as soon as they happen
Accidents will happen, there is not much you can do to stop them. But the goal here is speed. The faster you clean up that sticky spill, the less harm it will cause. Avoid rubbing or scrubbing, since this can cause the stain to set or worse damage the carpet. Instead, remove any solid materials and soak up the moisture by blotting.
If you are faced with stubborn stains, use an enzyme-based cleaning agent on it to help break down organic materials for easy removal. We advise doing this at night, so there is plenty of time to allow the cleaner to work.
In the morning, before opening the restaurant for service, rinse the treated section with water and blot with soft fabric. Then steam clean to ensure no trace is left behind.
- Hire professional cleaners
No matter how well you maintain your carpet, grease particles from your kitchen will always settle on surfaces and fabrics within your restaurant. Once present on carpets, this grease build up can leave sticky residues, attracting dust and dirt and compounding the problem.
This results in stains and odours that are difficult to eliminate using primary cleaning products, necessitating regular deep-cleaning to ensure carpets remain clean, smell-free and hygienic.
A professional cleaning service uses more powerful cleaning agents helping to remove all grease, soil and trapped particles in the fabric.
Professional tools also eliminate excess moisture during the cleaning process allowing carpets to dry much faster, preventing downtime and reducing the risk of mouldy odours later.
- Safeguard your carpet where possible
Have a think about high foot fall areas and those that are most likely to experience spills and stains. Then, where possible introduce rubber-backed mats into these areas. Think doorways, food preparation areas, and any high-traffic areas such as a bar.
Installation of mats around exterior doors is particularly important as feet can easily transfer dirt onto your restaurant carpets, introducing bacteria and microbes from outside.
- Choose the right type of carpet
Picking a sensible type of carpet in the fist place can make a huge difference when it comes to maintaining the cleanliness and aesthetics of your floor covering.
Select a fabric with a short pile that has been pre-treated to increase its stain-resistance. You may also want to ensure the carpet is UV protected to prevent the fading of any patches that are exposed to sunlight.
With the public-facing nature of a restaurant it is wise to choose a dense carpet with lots of fibres that can withstand high footfall. And it pays to choose a patterned material that is able to mask smaller stains and spots until more thorough cleaning is possible.
First impressions count. A customer’s experience in your restaurant can be made or broken not only by the quality of the food and service, but by how clean they perceive the place to be.
That’s why it pays, particularly in this age of Google Reviews and trial by social media, to invest in a good quality restaurant carpet and put in place a care and cleaning routine that will maintain it for years to come.
