Importance of Pest Control in Commercial Kitchens

I have a very clean restaurant in the Willow Grove area of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, and the owner questions me in a joking way, “why do I need pest control, I have the cleanest kitchen in town!”. Cleanliness is oftentimes in the eyes of the beholder and the potential for infestation is very high when you think about the workings of a kitchen and restaurant. Let’s take a look at this.

For one thing, a commercial kitchen have many deliveries from various vendors on a daily or weekly basis. The doors are propped open and the smell of kitchen drifts out and alerts the rodent population that the kitchen is open. So it is important to set up a proper rodent control program utilizing products like tin cat traps or ketch all traps or multi catch traps as we call them in the industry, are perfect to help trap any unwanted guests in the kitchen. Bait stations and other traps are also important to use in certain situations. It’s also a good idea to use exterior bait stations to kill the population of mice to prevent them from entering the kitchen.

Also, these deliveries have the potential to bring in hitchhikers from the warehouses they are in before they get delivered. Pests like roaches often times are introduced into a restaurant via delivery from an outside vendor. They love the construction of boxes and live in the nooks and crannies of these boxes. It’s because of this that it is important to use insect growth regulators to prevent these roaches from reproducing. Using monitors and traps will also help to monitor for any new activity.

Another issue that haunts restaurants is the dreaded fly. House flies, drain flies, fruit flies, phorid flies, moth flies are all frequent visitors to your food handling establishment. You need to set up a concrete fly control program utilizing commercial fly light traps, various fly baits, and good old fashioned elbow grease when it comes to cleaning out floor drains to remove the sludge that small flies breed in.

Having a clean kitchen as mentioned at the beginning is also very important, but it is easy to see how problems can be introduced.

If you are even in need of a solid commercial kitchen pest control service please consider Grove Pest Control. Call us at 215-237-6831.