Support clean kitchens from the start with the right design and equipment

Google "restaurant kitchen cleaning," and you'll get an abundance of results about the importance of clean kitchens, daily and weekly checklists for kitchen cleaning, available cleaning services, horror stories, and more. You'll get all that because restaurant kitchen cleanliness is really, really important.

While the nitty gritty (pun intended) of keeping a clean kitchen is mostly about the day-to-day cleaning and sanitizing work, restaurants can set up kitchens for success from the start with smart design and convenient, easy-to-use equipment.

• Choose equipment that's easy to clean. Avoid nooks and crannies or equipment that can't be wiped down easily. If it's a piece of equipment that should periodically be disassembled to fully clean, ensure the steps and directions are easy and intuitive to follow. This advice goes for everything from the biggest walk-ins to the smallest toaster and everything between. Whenever possible, choose equipment with casters so that it can be rolled out of the way for cleaning floors and walls.
• Make water easily accessible but smartly located. Research and observational studies continue to show that access to cleaning facilities increases the likelihood of their use. While this tendency is most often observed when it comes to hand washing, other kinds of cleaning are also less likely to feel like a drudgery when the water is close at hand. But also make sure that sinks are placed where there's no chance that dirty water could be splashed onto food, clean dishes, or cooking tools or equipment.
• Human safety is as important as food safety. Ensure the design limits the possibility of trip hazards or other safety concerns in a kitchen. Part of that is ensuring that everything that's needed is included right from the start so that workers aren't trying to shoehorn an extra countertop or piece of equipment in a space not intended to hold it, thus creating obstacles for staff to work around.
• Provide appropriate cleaning equipment. Hose reels are a valuable tool for keeping kitchens clean. Mounted on ceilings or walls - or even on table legs on a swivel mount and then swung under the table to stay out of the way - hose reels are a more powerful and more efficient option than mops and buckets and do not pose the safety hazard that a wound-up garden hose does. Hose reels of various sizes can be used to clean floors, walls, tables and prep areas, and cooking equipment.

T&S Brass makes specifying hose reels for kitchens easy with our hose reel systems, which include everything that's needed for a code-compliant installation in one model number. And our easy numbering system allows designers and consultants to choose the setup that's right for the application - customizing hose length, reel material, spray valve, mounting brackets and more as needed.

Learn more about efficient, effective hose reel systems from T&S Brass.