The Importance of Cool Room Cleaning in the Food Industry
As someone who runs or owns a restaurant or other commercial kitchen, you certainly care a lot about the type of products you buy. You choose them carefully, relying on trusted service providers to make sure that your customers are happy.
Choosing the right produce is only a part of the journey, as food storage is equally important to the quality and safety of food served. Keeping your cool room clean is crucial if you want to avoid issues with your products. This should be done by hiring a professional cool room cleaning service.
Cool Rooms and Food Safety
Anyone who runs a commercial kitchen would agree that it can’t operate properly without a cool room. The main role of a cool room is to ensure the proper temperature for food preservation. From raw meat, through fish to fresh fruit and vegetables, it’s important to store products in a way that would prevent spoilage.
Modern cool rooms allow you to control the temperature to make sure it’s appropriate for the products you store. What’s more, a cool room gives your commercial kitchen more space than a fridge. This means that you can separate your products better so there’s no risk of cross-contamination between products that are potentially hazardous when uncooked and other food items.
Well-organised cool rooms also allow for better organisation, for instance, according to the expiry date to minimise spoilage. Last but not least, even if your staff doesn’t have time to organize freshly delivered products right away, they can safely wait in the storage room for their turn.
As you can see, a cool room is crucial to food safety. However, only a properly maintained storage room with regularly done cleaning checks will work well for your business. What dangers await your staff, customers and reputation in a neglected cool room? Keep reading to find out.
The Danger of Mould Growth
One of the biggest dangers of a dirty cool room in a commercial kitchen is mould growth. Mould can be dangerous to the health of staff and customers. Once it starts growing, it’s much more difficult to eliminate. This is why it’s best to invest in preventive measures.
By adhering to good practices in maintenance of your cool room, you deal with the problem before it appears. There’s a number of things you should do in order to avoid issues with mould:
- Never leave the door to the cool room open for a prolonged period of time
- Make sure that the cool room is well-sealed and airtight
- Ensure adequate ventilation
- Avoid keeping paper and cardboard in a cool room as it may absorb moisture
- Eliminate food past its expiry date
- Keep your cool room clean
These are all good maintenance practices that you should remember in your day-to-day commercial kitchen operations. However, even with these behaviours in check, it may turn out that your efforts are not enough.
If mould appears, there are still some things you could do to eliminate it. You should start by inspecting all food items and checking them for mould. It’s much easier to improve the situation when only one or two items have been affected by it. You can also wipe surfaces and vacuum the area to improve the situation.
Don’t despair if a staff member has found some mould in the cool room. It can appear in even the best-maintained areas, which is why it’s good to invest in professional cleaning services. Specialists, such as Lotus Commercial, will clean all accessible surfaces to make sure there’s no fungal growth.
Avoiding Risks by Hiring Professionals
Hiring professionals for your cool room cleaning needs is the best way possible to avoid mould growth and other sanitary issues. It’s also important to remember that as untrained individuals, you and your team simply don’t know what’s required to comply with the Australian Standards.
All procedures we have described above are just the minimum effort any commercial kitchen should put into cool room maintenance. However, you may be unaware of regulatory compliance and other issues at play. In case of a health inspection or insurance claim, you want to be sure that there’s nothing that could go wrong.
Cool room cleaning professionals, such as Lotus Commercial, will make sure that this area is cleaned in an adequate manner. During a cleaning check and procedure, the following would be cleaned:
- internal ceilings
- walls
- external surfaces (such as these of condensers)
- doors
- lights
The use of a HACCP certified mould inhibitor on some surfaces is also standard during a professional cool room cleaning procedure.
Cleaning Cool Rooms with Lotus Commercial
There are many cool room maintenance specialists out there, so how to decide which one is the right one for you? If your business is based in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Townsville or Cairns there’s only one choice for you!
Lotus Commercial is a commercial kitchen cleaning services provider with over three decades of experience. Thanks to our expertise, you can be sure that your clean, cool room will meet all standards and requirements.
We’re a HACCP-certified service provider of cleaning services that are efficient and most importantly, food safe. Our team members complete ongoing training on standard work procedures and safe work strategies.
We can also do much more for you than just cleaning checks of your cool room. Our reliable services include:
- kitchen exhaust cleaning
- kitchen canopy cleaning
- aircon duct cleaning
- kitchen filter exchange
- filter sales
Contact one of our local offices directly or fill in our online form. Don’t wait until mould gets hold of your cool room. Contact us today to schedule cleaning services at appropriate intervals!