A Guide to Maintaining Dishwashers for Restaurants

In the food business, specifically restaurants and fast-food, the quality and taste of the food is a vital key, but those things can only go so far when the food isn’t served clean or on time. With dishes time-consuming to wash by hand, heavy-duty commercial dishwashers have become a staple for food businesses looking to operate with the best efficiency and sanitation.

However, with the busy day-to-day operations of food businesses, these dishwashers go through a lot of heavy use and wear and tear. In time, they can break down. And that’s never good for business, especially if it happens in the middle of the day. Also, the cost of buying a new heavy-duty dishwasher can get very high, depending on the restaurant’s needs.

While it can be a problem, you can avoid it with careful & smart usage coupled with regular maintenance. These dishwashers are made for heavy use; they can break down, but they probably won’t if you take care of them.

To save you from the trouble of a broken dishwasher, here are some of the ways that you can take care of your dishwasher and make it last for years.

Preventive Maintenance

Heavy-duty commercial dishwashers can last a long time; they’re supposed to. These machines should continue being effective even with prolonged heavy use. However, it will inevitably break down after some years of rough use; but you can always take care of your dishwasher with some smart and timely preventive maintenance.

• Regular inspection – By scheduling regular inspections, you can be aware of potential issues and risks with the dishwasher before they start causing any real problems. Doing this will give you the ability to replace or repair damaged parts ahead of time, lowering the chance of the machine giving up during a busy day. To make sure that your dishwasher is properly being taken care of, schedule regular inspections with a trusted dishwasher technician.
• Clean the dishes a bit – Yes, these are heavy-duty commercial dishwashers we’re talking about, and they can handle the dirtiest, greasiest jobs, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to help them out. So often, restaurant employees just put everything into the dishwasher. While this may be the quicker way of doing things, it’s also a quicker way to ruin your dishwasher.

So, before putting the dirty dishes into the washer, you can give it a quick scrape and even a rinse. Your dishwasher will thank you for it as it won’t have to deal with so much grease, and there’s a lower chance of food particles accumulating in tight spaces, which is not good for sanitation.

• Use a clean filter – While it’s not the most pleasant job because of all the accumulated grease, food particles, and other dirt, restaurants should make sure that they use clean filters. Why? It’s to ensure that nothing blocks the water flow and that your dishwasher will be better at cleaning.
• Regular cleaning – This one doesn’t need much explanation. Dishwashers clean dirty dishes, but that doesn’t mean you can just leave them dirty. To make sure that it won’t get damaged due to poor sanitation and that your utensils will come out clean, it’s a must to clean the dishwasher at the end of each day.
• Refill the tank regularly – This won’t only make your dishwasher cleaner and less prone to damage, but it will also increase your dishwasher’s cleaning effectiveness with clean water all the time. If you don’t know how often you should do this, refilling the tank every 20 cycles is just about the sweet spot.

Let your employees learn about the dishwasher

While performing regular preventive maintenance procedures will do good in your effort in prolonging your dishwasher’s life and maintaining its effectiveness and efficiency, there’s still one more thing that you can do better. It’s by teaching your team the proper way to run the machine. Here are some things you can do to do that:

• Read the manual – Most people don’t read the manual, only to regret it later. By reading it, you’ll be made aware of the proper way of using the machine and some of its restrictions. It will also teach you what to do if weird things happen or if it suddenly breaks down.
• Make the dishwashing process organized and systematic – For a restaurant to thrive, it needs to work with a clearly defined system of working to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. So, to do this, make sure to teach your employees the proper system of working with the dishwasher that can help them do things quickly and that will ensure everything that comes out of the dishwasher will be squeaky clean.
• Lead the way – To ensure that your employees will do their job the way you want it done, you need to teach it to your employees and make sure that they fully understand how you want things done.

In a big way, heavy-duty dishwashers help a lot in terms of food businesses’ day-to-day operations, and without them, the restaurant ceases to run like clockwork. Food will be served late, or they will come out with compromised sanitation, which puts the restaurant in a pretty bad situation.

Warewashing Solutions is Australia’s leading commercial dishwasher supplier. With a wide variety of high quality and high-performance commercial dishwasher product lines, Warewashing Solutions can provide you with the best and most heavy-duty commercial dishwashers the industry has to offer.