When you find mice in your restaurant, it can feel like a bad omen. It’s an age-old sign that a restaurant is dirty — at least, that’s what we’ve been told. In reality, mice can easily find their way into a building, and any building with readily available food and water can be hard to resist. Here’s what you need to do if you find mice in your restaurant: 

Find the Mice

This may seem obvious, but it’s an often overlooked first step in getting rid of rodents. Inspect the restaurant thoroughly to see if you can figure out where the mice are entering the restaurant, nesting and finding food. Look for small openings, cracks, holes and gaps facing the exterior. See if you can spot common signs of mice, like droppings, gnaw marks and chewed up packaging. 

Seal Entry Points

The best way to remove mice from your restaurant is to stop letting them in. If your restaurant needs some TLC, now is the time to get it done. This includes fixing broken screens, sealing cracks in walls and floors, as well as filling gaps around pipes, doors and windows. Heavy duty wire mesh and caulk can be your best friends as you go around plugging these holes. 

Remove Easy Food Sources

Your staff needs easy access to the food in your restaurant, but unfortunately, if the access is too easy for them, it will be for mice, as well. Fortunately, mice will go for the easy targets, so it’s not hard to remove it from their grasp. Reduce the amount of accessible food sources by storing food in airtight containers, cleaning food prep areas regularly and disposing of trash as soon as possible. Cleaning food debris and spills as soon as they happen can also help you keep mice away. 

Call the Professionals

While you could set up sticky traps or snap traps without contaminating your kitchen further, this involves employees handling potentially hazardous waste, which is less than ideal. If you’ve confirmed you have a mice problem in your restaurant, you want to get it taken care of as quickly and professionally as possible to limit any disruptions in your operations. You also don’t want customers or inspectors seeing mice in your restaurant. No one wants that in their reviews. 

Do a Deep Clean

After you get rid of the mice infestation, focus on cleaning and sanitizing all areas the mice may have been. If there’s food packaging they got into, unfortunately, you need to throw the whole thing out. Even if it’s a big box or bag, you never know how much of it the mice managed to contaminate. Once you’ve cleaned the areas where you see signs of mice, consider an all-around deep clean to make sure you cover all your bases. 

Mice are one of the last things you want in your restaurant. If you find evidence that these critters have invaded your restaurant, the Des Moines mice removal experts at Pro-Staff can help. Call us at 515-279-7378 or contact us online for a free inspection.