Pretty much every single aspect of your restaurant will require a significant investment on your part, so it is understandable that you might want to maintain it. This is especially true for booths that you have purchased to furnish your establishment. After all, customers aren’t going to want to sit in dirty booths. What’s more, leaving your booths dirty for extended periods of time could potentially limit their life expectancy by a large margin.
To be clear, you need to clean your restaurant booths on a regular basis. Failing to do so could create a domino effect wherein your customers would start to lose trust in you, and your long term expenses will start to skyrocket in ways you can’t predict. This is an essential aspect of booth maintenance as well, so we are going to be diving into the particular process that should be implemented to get this done the right way.
Firstly, it’s important to realize that spills need to be cleaned immediately. Everyday dirt accumulation could be left for another time, although it’s definitely not advised, but there is a serious time constraint when it comes to accidental spills and the like.
Allowing the spill to settle could stain the fabric of the booths. It can also damage the booths by compromising their structural integrity, so it’s best if you have some dry wipes handy so that the spill can be soaked up before it can do too much harm.
Once the liquid has been absorbed, you need to get to work with a wet cloth and some detergent. This will take care of any grease or other matter that might have been left behind. If you were to do this as soon as the spill occurs, or at least not long after it happens, you can mitigate the long term impacts and ensure that your booths will live to fight another day!
Moving on, spills are not the only things that you need to take into account as far as booth cleaning and maintenance is considered. There is also the ever present danger of dirt and grime that you need to take care of.
Now, you can’t start cleaning booths while your customers are enjoying their meal. This would ruin their experience and also make the cleaning process far harder than it needs to be. Try to avoid doing any daily cleaning while your restaurant is open to patrons. Focus on spills and other immediate concerns during open hours, and set some time aside before you open and after you close to get rid of the aforementioned dirt.
The first step to cleaning dirt off of your booths is to use a vacuum. Handheld vacuums are the best choice here, since they are lightweight and portable. You can use a regular vacuum cleaner as well, but they can be a tad cumbersome and might take up too much space which can be frustrating if you manage a restaurant with limited room.
Try to be extremely conscientious about the areas that you tackle. Even if the dust appears to be gone, double check the corners and the seams to ensure that every bit of particulate matter is lifted off of the underlying fabric.
You can also try to use a brush and dustpan in a pinch. This won’t be nearly as effective as something with a bit of suction, but it’s definitely better than doing nothing at all. Just make sure that you’re using a soft bristled brush.
Brushes with hard bristles won’t be able to collect the finer dust that might form a layer on top of the booths. Secondly, such brushes could dig some grooves into the fabric, and you’ll have a pretty hard time getting them out. The damage that you could do to the booth has the potential to be pretty severe, so we would advise that you avoid using firm bristles at any cost.
Once the vacuuming is out of the way, you can bring your trusted wet cloth back to finish things off. If you really want to give your booths the best available cleaning, consider using microfiber cloths.
They can get rid of a far greater quantity of dirt thanks to the miniscule fibers that will pick up even the finest of particles. These kinds of cloths are generally used to wipe glass, so you can imagine the kind of results they’d bring out on some booth fabric!
You won’t necessarily need to use detergent, since wet fabrics can collect much of the dust that you’d want to get rid of. That said, you might want to consider using detergents or other forms of surfactants every once in a while.
Doing this about once a week can be more than adequate. Be cautious about how frequently you apply surfactants. Overdoing it could leach some of the color out of the fabric or soften it up by a considerable degree.
Finally, you can finish off your maintenance process by applying some stain guards. They can act as the first line of defense against blemishes and marks, along with making the post spill clean up timeline far less intense.
However, you should consult with the booth manufacturer before applying stain guard. Chances are that the booth you purchased already came with a stain guard on the fabric. You can skip this step if that’s the case, at least until the natural layer wears off over time.
It shouldn’t take your crew more than an hour tops to get all of this done. That’s not a lot of time, and the benefits that it will bring are far greater than the extra hour that you might need to pay your workers for. Try training them to ensure they follow each step precisely.