In order for you to get to a point where customers would want to come to your eatery regularly thereby providing you with a consistent cash flow, it is very important that you maintain a clean environment within your establishment. Regular cleaning in your kitchen is very important for a number of reasons with the most obvious being that failing to do so might result in a few safety hazards that could result in your eatery being closed down. You should also clean your floors pretty much every day as a grimy or dirty floor will be a major turn-off for most of the customers that you would ideally want to keep.
However, all that we have discussed above is immediately apparent to even the most novice of restaurant owners. What we are going to be discussing here is a bit more advanced, and it essentially involves cleaning the various furnishings that you would have added to your place to make it comfortable and elegant in some way, shape, or form. You can buy a lot of cleaning products to help with this process, but we’ve found that choosing the right furniture in the first place can often make cleaning far easier than might have been the case otherwise and we’re going to tell you why shortly.
Basically, certain types of furniture are most definitely going to be easier to keep clean than others. We’re not talking about chairs for restaurants as a type here either, rather we are referring to the material with which said furniture might be made. Whether you are trying to clean a table or a chair, the kind of substance that the manufacturing process used to craft the piece will play a major role in how difficult it might be to clean as well as what cleaning products you might need to use in order to get it looking absolutely spick and span.
One really great option that a lot of restaurateurs tend to avoid is plastic furniture. You might not think that plastic furniture can go with the vibe of your place, but for the most part, this is a very old school method of approaching your furniture since a few decades ago plastic furniture was cheap and low quality and was therefore unsuitable for all but the most budget-conscious eateries.
However, nowadays you can get plastic furniture that is of a much higher grade, and this means that you can use it safely without compromising on the aesthetics that are crucial to you surviving in the restaurant industry. We feel that plastic furniture can be great in most cases primarily because plastic is a far easier material to clean. It’s not as absorbent as wood nor is it prone to rust like metal which means that you can use a simple wet cloth on it and subsequently get rid of the vast majority of the dirt that might have accumulated on it.
Not having to use chemical-based cleaners is another great aspect of plastic furniture since it can help you avoid its environmental impact and the harm that this can cause to your workers as well. Plenty of workers end up suffering from health consequences due to breathing in the fumes that emerge from chemical-based cleaners, so anything that helps you avoid the usage of such products is definitely worth looking into. You can just lighter cleaners if you want to disinfect surfaces, but apart from that, there’s nothing that some soapy water won’t be able to solve.
Now, plastic furniture is definitely an option that you can explore but at times it won’t be suitable for your restaurant even if it is durable and of high aesthetic quality. Plastic is limited in terms of comfort since there is a give and take that happens with virtually all materials that you might happen to work with. Hence, if you want something that offers a bit more relaxation to your customers it might be better for you to go for plush furniture that has fabric on it.
This furniture is perfect for situations where your customers might want to have extended dining sessions in your establishment. You might need to modify your cleaning practices if this is the material you decide to go for, though. You obviously can’t use soapy water and a washcloth to clean these kinds of chairs as this would make them wet and you’d have to dry them before they can be used again. This is highly unsuitable since if your chairs were to go out of commission after a simple cleaning this would make it difficult for you to keep enough around for walk-in customers and the like.
A handheld vacuum and a steaming machine are two very important tools that could prove useful for such material. The vacuum can suck up loose debris that might have collected inside the fabric, and the steamer would get rid of stains without soaking the chair completely. This provides a great middle-ground between dry cleaning and wet cleaning which is perfect if you don’t want to ruin the fabric that so many of your customers love.
Cleaning is a lot of work, and if you want to try to avoid it as much as possible it would be good of you to look for furniture that does not require it in overly large quantities. Plastic and fabric are two special choices that you can never go wrong with, and they provide a bit of diversity based on the kind of clientele that you are hoping to attract as well. Try to use a combination of the two for the best results.