Restaurant floors take a lot of abuse, from food spills to constant foot traffic. Worse yet, grease from the kitchen can become trapped in carpet and in the cracks and crevices of hard-surface floors. Not only is this buildup unsightly, it also harbors bacteria and creates unpleasant odors-not exactly a recipe for success in the restaurant business.
What’s the best way to care for your restaurant floors? According to Jack Haughee of Hydro Clean in Mishawaka, Indiana, keeping your restaurant floors clean requires more than just daily mopping. Haughee, whose company offers tile and grout cleaning in South Bend and the surrounding areas, says that professional steam cleaning is the best way to keep your floors looking and smelling their best.
Why Mopping Isn’t Enough
According to Haughee, most restaurants with tile and grout floors don’t have an effective way to clean their floors. It’s typical for owners to have staff members mop at the end of each day. But mopping, he says, just isn’t enough, even when it’s performed every day.
“Although it doesn’t appear to be, tile is porous. When you mop a tile floor daily, all the water and soil from the mopping process is simply accumulating in all of the voids and grooves within the tile,” Haughee explains. This accumulation of water, soil and grease (particularly in kitchens) builds up over time and begins to harbor bacteria. What’s more, mopping is completely ineffective at removing soil from the grout between tiles. Instead, dirt is simply moved from the surface of the tile onto the grout, where it can cause stains and unpleasant odors.
Not only are restaurant floors subject to the grease from the kitchen, says Haughee, they’re also affected by particles coming into the restaurant from outside. Many restaurants have asphalt parking lots. When the weather gets hot, residual petroleum from the parking lot is carried into the facility on customers’ shoes and deposited onto the floors. This sticky, greasy petroleum attracts soil. If not cleaned regularly and in a manner that lifts the soil and grease away from the surface rather than simply moving it to another location, floors will quickly accumulate a thick layer of buildup.
The Steam Cleaning Advantage
Haughee works with a number of restaurants in the Michiana area to provide professional steam cleaning on a regular basis. He says that the improvement in the appearance of these restaurant floors after his team has finished is dramatic. “As soon as we start cleaning, you can definitely see the difference between clean and dirty,” he says. “And when it’s finished, you can also smell the difference.”
Haughee offers another example of a local restaurant in which both hard-surface floors and carpet are present. Haughee’s team generally cleans the floors, both carpet and tile, once per month. “At one point, we skipped a month at the owner’s request,” he says. “When we came in the next month, you wouldn’t believe the amount of grease that had built up in the carpet.”
Steam cleaning, Haughee says, is a great way to deep clean both carpets and hard-surface floors. “Steam cleaning doesn’t just get rid of dirt and grease buildup,” he says, “it also disinfects and gets rid of unpleasant odors. Our service is ideal for restaurant owners.”