Cleaning Solution Today Keeps the Technician Away

Most commercial kitchen and restaurant owners are experts in foodservice equipment reports and clean their machines regularly. That’s not something you have to worry about in this day and age, thankfully. As consumers of food, what we have to worry about is when machines break down and food can’t be made. That’s not good for the hungry masses. What’s even worse, is that many times, that downtime could be prevented by using the proper cleaning procedures and not just a cleaning procedure.

Foodservice Equipment Reports recently reported on a situation when yours truly was able to help out in just such a scenario. One large client had a pair of stacked bakery ovens go offline. When you’re a big client, you need it fixed ASAP. They did the right thing and called us in for the job. But what we found was perplexing. All the employees had been operating the system properly and were cleaning it every night. Upon closer inspection, the bottom oven simply wouldn’t turn on and the top oven’s cleaning fluid lines had corroded through and were leaking cleaning fluid. What could have caused something like that?

It turns out that the staff had found a heavy duty cleaning solution to use elsewhere in the kitchen and had started using it everywhere. They weren’t even diluting it. The effect on the ovens was disastrous. The solutions were far stronger than the lines or metal were meant to take. The line had been the first to go, but extra solution was pooling in the bottom of the oven and leaking into the machine below. The electrics of the lower unit were fried by cleaning solution. They cared about keeping things clean so much that they actually accrued thousands of dollars in damages from using too strong of a solution.

CPS's foodservice equipment service technicians instructed the company to switch to a less powerful cleaning agent and train their staff on how to use it. This was a simpler solution (pardon the chemistry pun).

Double check your manuals and be sure that you’re following the cleaning procedures outlined by the manufacturer. We love to see your smiling faces, but we want to save you money too. So keep the foodservice equipment service technicians away with proper maintenance of your equipment.

Thank you to Foodservice Equipment Reports for highlighting such an important issue for any commercial kitchen.