How to Get Your Restaurant Ready for Inspection

Make a Perfect Picture

One of the more creative ways I have come up with for getting the store cleaned up in general and for getting ready for an inspection entailed grabbing one of my employees (not literally) and positioning him/her at the very beginning of one of the three "aisles" we have in the store. I then give them paper and pen and tell them to make observations on what they see in their field of view that needs to be either cleaned or organized. Once they complete their list, I go tell them to go clean their "picture". Therefore, they go and clean all the items on their list. I then bring them back to their starting spot and have them do it again. Make observations, write them down, and go clean up. Once this side of the "picture" is "perfect", I direct them to go stand at the opposite end of the same aisle. The process begins again and continues until the employee can no longer find anything that they can add to the list. I may make a few observations to get the process started all over again, but usually, by this point, this equates to becoming a final list. The area, when finished, is about as perfect as it can get, save maybe any maintenance repairs that are out of the employee's control. The reason why I set it up this way is simple. These are simply observations managers and crew alike can make in their store. One of the best benefits of this process is that not only do you get a clean store, but employees take a measure of responsibility in that management process. They own their work and the pride that comes from accomplishing what is not normally accomplished.

A Master Cleaning List

One of the benefits of completing this process is that you get a whole bunch of data. If you collect all of the papers with all of the cleaning jobs that were written down, what you have in your hands is just about every cleaning task that can be completed to get your store ready for inspection. What I have done and had much success with, is take that data and organize it by station name. In Microsoft Word, I created a Master Cleaning List that I was able to distribute in one of two ways.

1. If I was in a hurry to get things done for an inspection, I printed it off and placed it in a conspicuous place that the employees would see when they clocked in. As tasks got completed during the day, the manager on duty would double-check the cleaning job, and then scratch through it in a pen or pencil when it was deemed complete and inspection worthy.

2. For daily cleaning and to keep our store always inspection ready, I created station cleaning sheets which I laminated and velcroed to each and every station. At these stations, I placed dry erase markers that the crew could use to quickly mark off their cleaning tasks once they have been completed.

The More You Clean, The More Dirt You Will See

It is true. The more you clean, the more that the dirty stuff tends to stand out! Haven't you ever cleaned one good spot and it is so shiny that it makes the rest of the stuff in your field of view look just that much dirtier and dull? This operation attacks the jobs by changing the point of view. An inspector might not catch something on his first walk through that aisle. However, when he walks through from the other direction, he is bound to see something that was missed because he is automatically looking at it from a different point of view.

So this is why it is important to go through and have your crew make several observations, because once the cleaning is "done" the other stuff that normally gets neglects kind of gets a more focused spotlight. I have gotten Triple A+ scores on many inspections using this technique.

I use this line with my crew whenever I want my cleaning done:

"Here's your towel. Go make it dirty!"

Your Wordsmith,

Matthew Leo

© 2020 Matthew Leo