For restaurant groups and chains, maintaining a brand standard and consistent cleanliness is essential for securing repeat business. In today's age of social media and online reviews, a lack of cleanliness can spell trouble not only for one restaurant location, but an entire brand. A 2018 Harris Poll found that 89 percent of Americans would not visit a restaurant with negative online reviews about its restrooms.
A common challenge restaurants face is achieving consistently clean facilities when dealing with variables such as foot traffic and weather that differ from location to location. Consistent results can be accomplished by following these four simple steps:
Define the cleaning standard
First, the restaurant, along with cleaning partners such as the chemical manufacturer, must define the cleaning standard. In other words, what does the restaurant want the customer to experience when they visit each location? The standard of cleanliness should encompass the key areas of the facility that will have the greatest impact on customers? buying behavior. This includes restrooms, entrance ways, floors, tables and other customer-facing areas.
Devise a cleaning plan
In working with product manufacturers, restaurant owners and managers must figure out how to achieve the desired level of cleanliness, or brand standard, across different geographies and location layouts.The cleaning plan should include carefully selected products, processes, tools and equipment. For example, concentrated cleaning products can reduce waste while improving cleanliness and color-coded tools can help eliminate cross contamination between areas like restrooms and kitchens.
Implement training
Training all employees at one time and in one place is not feasible when managing multiple restaurants across one city, several cities or even states, and turnover can add a further hindrance. Online training programs are an ideal way to educate employees because they are available 24/7 in multiple languages, interactive and can be tailored to adult learning styles, job roles and specific locations. Training schedules should be developed and combine online training with in-person training for special topics.
Monitor cleaning performance
Organizations can validate cleaning using a secure auditing platform that collects, analyzes and reports data in real time. They can pinpoint trends for each employee and facility, across all locations. This facilitates continuous improvement of hygiene and safety standards by identifying where cleaning programs need to be refined and where retraining needs to occur. Over time, as each restaurant location refines its cleaning program, the gap between customers? expectations and cleaning outcomes will become smaller.
By following four simple steps, restaurants can develop and maintain a consistent brand image across multiple locations. Providing customers with a clean dining atmosphere will help keep them in the restaurant longer and build brand loyalty, translating to greater revenue.