At your restaurant, you are constantly ordering, preparing, and supplying food for the community and visitors. While feeding paying customers is great, you may inadvertently be preparing free food for pests. Rodents and bugs may be finding their way into your food supply and making a home there. Regular commercial pest control services will help you avoid these issues, but there are also steps you can take. Here are our recommendations for avoiding these pests:

Rodents

When rodents see your restaurant, they see a constant supply of food that does not require a lot of travel. Not only do rodents eat foods at every level of preparedness — from under ripe to rotten — they also spread disease and damage fixtures. To avoid rodents, store food items in airtight containers, and limit access points around the restaurant. With doors constantly opening and closing, they can easily find their way inside. Make sure doors and windows are shut tight at the end of the night. Regular inspections and maintenance can also help you avoid rodent problems. 

Cockroaches

Because of their varied diet, small size, rapid reproduction, cockroaches thrive in restaurants. These bugs can spread diseases like E. coli and Salmonella in food, as well as utensils, machinery, and whatever else they crawl across. To avoid cockroaches, practice good sanitation, cleaning up spills and messes as soon as they happen. Store food in airtight containers so they can’t smell it. There are many over-the-counter products that kill roaches, but they are not all safe to use around food. Be careful when looking into DIY cockroach solutions, or just leave it to the professionals.

Flies

The problem with flies is not their direct effect on humans, but the variety of species they have and diseases they carry. Different types of flies like different types of food, which creates a huge sanitation problem. Keeping the place clean is the main way to avoid flies. Take out the trash regularly and effectively. Make sure drains are free of debris. Keep all windows and doors shut, and install fly screens. Since they are so small, flies have no trouble finding their way in, so we recommend using as many methods as possible to avoid them.

Stored Product Insects

Some bugs specifically find their way into forgotten food products. Bugs like weevils, moths, beetles and mites infest stored food and make their home in the food supply. If you find bugs in any of your food, dispose of the food immediately, checking the items around it for infestation. Adults of these species, especially weevils, will go out seeking other foods. The more you find, the longer you have had an infestation. To avoid stored product insects, or SPIs, store food products properly in tightly closed containers. Plastic and glass containers are preferred over paper and cardboard, which cannot be fully sealed. 

At Pro-Staff in Des Moines, we have seen every type of infestation in restaurants. If you are experiencing issues that require commercial pest control, we can help. Give us a call at 515-279-7378 or contact us online.