A cafe cleaning schedule that actually gets done

Effective cleaning of food-contact surfaces is a two-stage job. Stage one is cleaning: detergent and elbow grease to remove the visible grease and food debris. Stage two is disinfection: a disinfectant applied to the now-clean surface to kill the bacteria you can't see. Skipping stage one wastes stage two — disinfectant can't work through a film of grease.

The detail that trips kitchens up is contact time. Disinfectants meeting BS EN 1276 or BS EN 13697 (the standards FSA guidance points to) state a contact time on the label — often five minutes wet on the surface. Spraying and wiping in one motion feels clean but doesn't disinfect.

A schedule answers four questions for every job: what's cleaned, how (product and method, including contact time), how often, and who signs it off. Group jobs by rhythm:

The cleaning schedule is one of the records an EHO asks for, and it suffers the same failure mode as any paper checklist: a month of identical ticks signed in one sitting. The credible version is signed as jobs finish, notes when something couldn't be done and why, and matches what the inspector can see with their own eyes.

Digital schedules help with the mechanics — each sign-off is time-stamped, missed jobs surface the same day, and the history is exportable when asked — but the principle is the same on paper: little and often, honestly recorded.