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Restaurant cleaning checklist for cleaning crews
A night clean works from the front door to the back door: trash out, then the dining room and bar, the restrooms, the kitchen surfaces in your contract, kitchen floors and drains, and the dumpster area before you lock up. The rule that matters most is the split. Write down what your crew cleans, what the kitchen staff clean at close and what the hood company does, so nobody assumes someone else did it.
Edit the restaurant list
Front door to back door on a nightly visit. Strike the kitchen lines this restaurant’s own staff handle and write the manager’s standing requests at the top.
Restaurant cleaning checklist
- Let yourself in, disarm, lights on; read the manager’s notes
- Walk the kitchen: staff gone, equipment off and cooling, food put away
- Trash and recycling from every room; liners in, bags to the dumpster
- Dining room: crumbs out of booth seams, then chairs up on the tables
- Dining room: booth and chair seats, table bases, high chairs, sills
- Entry: door glass and handles, host stand, waiting bench, mats
- Bar: front, foot rail and stools; bottles, glasses and wells left alone
- Restrooms: toilets and urinals inside and out, partitions, baby station
- Restrooms: sinks, mirrors, refill dispensers; floor and drain disinfected
- Kitchen: walls, door faces, hand sinks and the outside of equipment
- Leave food-contact surfaces, slicers and the line to the kitchen staff
- Hood: wipe the outside; swap or wash filters only if it is on the quote
- Kitchen floor: sweep under the line, degrease, scrub, squeegee to drains
- Floor drains: grates up, baskets emptied, grates scrubbed, drains flushed
- Kitchen mats out, scrubbed and hosed, laid back once the floor is dry
- Dining and bar floors: vacuum carpet, mop hard floors, edges and corners
- Mop sink tidy, buckets emptied, chemicals shelved away from food
- Back door: dumpster lids shut, no loose bags, door locked behind you
- Leave the log: pests, leaks, anything left on; alarm set, front locked
What does a restaurant cleaning crew clean, and what do kitchen staff clean?
The crew usually takes what the public sees and everything people walk on: the dining room, the bar front, restrooms, floors, drains, walls and the trash. Kitchen staff clean whatever touches food at close: the line, prep tables, cutting boards, slicers, fryers and the dish machine, with their own sanitizer. Hood filters can go either way. The hood interior, ducts and exhaust fan belong to a hood cleaning company.
The arguments start in the gaps. A manager finds grease on the wall behind the fryer and assumes the night crew skipped it, when nobody ever said the fryers get pulled out. Walk the kitchen with the manager before the first night, point at the awkward surfaces (behind the line, the hood’s outside, the walk-in floor, the shelves under the prep tables) and write down who owns each one.
How do you clean a restaurant kitchen floor at night?
Sweep first, under and behind the equipment, because grease turns loose food into paste once it gets wet. Put down a degreaser made for kitchen floors, mixed and left to sit the way the label says, scrub with a deck brush and squeegee everything to the floor drains. Rinse and squeegee again. A kitchen floor that is still damp or tacky at opening is a slip risk and the first thing the prep cooks notice.
Floor drains and floor sinks are where the smell comes from. Lift each grate, empty the strainer basket into the trash, scrub the grate and flush the drain with hot water, since drain flies breed in the film that builds inside. Never pour grease or fryer oil down a drain. The grease trap is pumped by the restaurant’s own service company, and a blocked one backs up into the kitchen.
What should a night crew report to the restaurant manager?
Anything the morning crew needs to know before they open: equipment left on, a walk-in or freezer door found ajar, a leak under the dish machine or ice machine, a drain that backed up. Pest signs go in the note too, such as droppings, gnawed dry goods or roaches on the line when the lights come on. Mice and roaches move about when the kitchen is dark and quiet, so a night crew often sees them first.
Frequently asked questions
Who cleans the kitchen hood in a restaurant?
A hood cleaning company does the hood interior, the ducts and the exhaust fan. NFPA 96, the fire safety standard for commercial kitchen exhaust, sets how often by the type and volume of cooking and expects a trained, certified company to do the work and post a dated certificate in the kitchen. Kitchen staff often wash the filters. Your crew wipes the hood’s outside if it is on the quote.
What if the kitchen staff are still closing when you arrive?
Start at the front: the dining room, the bar front and the restrooms, while the line is broken down. Stay out of the kitchen until the last cook has gone and the equipment is off and cooling; a wet floor beside a hot fryer is how people get burned. If late closes keep pushing your finish back, raise it with the manager; waiting is time you are paid for.
Should a restaurant cleaner use the restaurant’s chemicals?
Not on anything that touches food; those surfaces stay with the kitchen staff and the sanitizer they check with test strips. Your crew brings its own floor degreaser, restroom disinfectant and glass cleaner, each labeled, and keeps them on the cart or on a shelf below and away from food. Never mix your products with theirs in one bucket: bleach with an acid or ammonia cleaner gives off toxic gas.