Roach Control in Bars and Restaurants.

Roach control or elimination is not an overnight prospect in food handling establishments like bars and restaurants. When you consider a German roach or a “food” roach can produce 40 baby roaches in one roach capsule or egg, the infestation levels become amazing quickly. They are small and fit into the tiniest of cracks and crevices, they get into the machinery of your restaurant equipment, they get behind the walls and in the electrical components of the establishment, all the while munching on whatever scraps are left behind when the people go home. Roaches are quite simply, a machine. They eat and breed. They survive.

Roaches can close down restaurants, they can destroy reputations, and they can make longtime customers disappear. They are not something you want and you should make every effort to keep them out and keep them from reproducing. So where do roaches come from and how do you get rid of them?

Restaurants are machines as well with lots of moving parts. There are customers who come in and out everyday, there are staff, and there are deliveries from multiple warehouses bringing in boxes of goods. All of these mentioned above can be possible conduits for roaches to enter your facility. All it takes if for one gravid, or pregnant, roach to hitch hike in on a customer’s coat or on a delivery box and you have the potential of 40 roaches springing from that egg.

A good pest control company who is hired for a food handling establishment should be in your place weekly if it is a full scale restaurant or twice a month if it is a smaller pizza kitchen or bar. This is important because that pest control company should be placing out monitors all over, in out of the way areas, to catch any potential problems before they become infestations. Why weekly? Because imagine if your pest control professional was in one day and the next day a roach was introduced into your facility, now it has a whole month to hatch eggs, reproduce with other roaches and those roaches hatch eggs.

Along with monitors a good pest control professional should be implementing some kind of insect growth regulator program. A hormone like hydroprene disrupts development and reproduction which will help in the control of any roach that might sneak in and stop the chances of reproduction or infestation before it happens. Other methods that will help is partnering with your pest control professional and listening to his or her advice on things like storage methods, keeping the kitchen clean and dry and keeping the kitchen and dining room maintained.

How about if there is already a full blown roach infestation at your restaurant? Then be prepared for a fight and bring your patience. There are a number of ways to approach a bad infestation, some of them include vacuuming as many live roaches as possible and then baiting and using sprays strategically. The baits today are so sophisticated that a regular baiting program can get things under control and keep them that way. It won’t be an overnight cure. If the roaches are at infestation levels then they were there for a long time and it will take some time to eliminate them. We are not talking months and months, but it may take up to a month to see total results. What you should see immediately is a noticeable reduction in activity and as the days go on that activity should continue to decrease until there is none.

Other methods that some companies use would include dusting and using fog machines which require a lot of prep work on the restaurant owner like covering all surfaces, plates, pots, etc with plastic. Removing all that the next day and washing everything.

Personally, here at Grove Pest Control, we prefer vacuum, baiting and using pesticides like Alpine WSG to gain control. It’s less of a production for your staff and keeps the roaches in place rather than disperse them throughout the restaurant like a fog or aerosol could.

No matter what method is used, you pest control company will require you to maybe seal up holes, caulk seams, and clean up dead roaches and wash roach feces or droppings off of the walls or equipment.

Roach control and elimination is attainable with the right pest control company who will be thorough and treat your facility like their own. My goal is always to provide a quality service and give my customer what they are paying for.