Pest Control in Restaurants

When we get calls from restaurants who are looking for pest control services the 3 top pests they are calling to complain about are mice, roaches and small flies. Mouse control is always a big one because the last thing you want to have run out in the open while someone is waiting for their pizza to cook is a mouse. Roaches of course are also on the list of pests not wanted in a restaurant because they are associated with being dirty. Then there is the small fly, A.K.A. fruit flies, drain flies and sewer flies. These flies terrorize areas like the bar and the kitchen. Nothing worse than sitting at the bar sipping on your Old Fashioned and swatting away little pesky fruit flies.

What is the secret to ridding your food handling establishment of these pests? Knowledge, a healthy amount of care and concern for the customer and their restaurant, and some good old fashioned elbow grease. You need to attack the problem with a plan. Like it or not, and sometimes the restaurant’s owner or manager doesn’t always like it, you need to partner with the management and staff to correct issues that might be contributing to the problem. Then you need to place out the proper product and enough of it to get the problem under control or eliminated. You’re not going to get anywhere if you put out a few glue traps that catches a few mice and call it a day. You need tin cats placed under equipment along with many other control measures. If your technician walks in and the next thing you know he is walking out then you need to reassess your pest control program. A technician’s knees should be dirty, and your staff should be tripping over him or her as they crawl under your prep tables and fryers.

Roaches are a pest that you need to attack with all a vengeance. A roach issue should be eliminated over a few days to a week, then maintained. If you hire a pest control company for roaches and they “treat” and then don’t show up again until the next monthly service and the roaches got better, but you are still seeing them then it’s time to call another company. A roach issue may be expensive on the front end, but it’s cheaper than loosing customer who are going to yell all over social media about the roaches they saw at your bar or restaurant.

Drain flies, Fruit flies, and all small flies can be handled by doing one thing really well. Sanitation. Removing the source they are breeding from is key. Whether that is by physically scrubbing away the grime and goo or using enzymes, it’s all about the elbow grease. You can’t spray away fruit flies, you can’t put out barkeeper friend or whatever the newest fume stick is and expect the issue to go away. It might help temporarily or lessen the amount of flies seen, but it a bad way to handle the problem, not to mention the fact that it is illegal to place these products out in food handling establishments. You will be cited by your local health inspector is they find these items.

So, to sum it all up it boils down to finding a good local pest control company who believes in quality service and who cares about you and your restaurant and wants you to succeed. That’s the ingredients to a good pest free establishment.