Stewarding Department and Kitchen Pest Control

One of the policies of a restaurant is to make sure that all the restaurant areas, be it the dining area or the kitchen area, are free from pests such as rats, squirrels, mice, cockroaches, ants, flies, beetles, mites, moths, lizards, snakes, worms, frogs, toads, and even bats and birds. Now, this duty falls on the shoulders of the stewarding department. It is there responsibility to see to it that no pests make the restaurant its home.

At least once a month, the stewarding department, together with the rest of the food and beverage department, has to conduct a pest control procedure not only in the kitchen area but throughout the restaurant as well. The chief steward is the one who will organize the procedure, and he will work with his stewarding supervisor to ensure that this is carried out.

However, before the actual pest control procedure takes place, here are the steps that the Stewarding Department has to make first.

1. The kitchen steward should remove all kitchen tools as well as kitchen operating equipments from their usual places such as the cupboards and shelves and transfer them to a trolley or a mobile table.
2. Once done, he should then cover all of the kitchen equipments and tools with a protective cloth. He has to make sure that the protective cloth is clean so as not to contaminate the kitchen tools and equipments.
3. The kitchen steward also has to transfer all of the food items and products stored in the shelves and cupboards to another storage area. But first, he has to make sure that the improvised storage place is clean so as not to contaminate the food items and products.

Once these steps have been done, the pest control procedure then can take place The usual pest control procedure is as follows:

1. The kitchen steward has to inspect the area, especially those areas where pests nest and breed. Some of these areas include the nooks and crannies of the restaurant, particularly the dark, damp, and cool areas like floor drains, wall voids, etc/. This will also include the perimeter surround the establishment, including shrubberies and most especially the garbage area. the common tools used in the inspection are torches or flashlights to illuminate dark corners, spatula to scrape off compressed residues that house pests like ants, lenses to look for smaller pests, specimen tubes to contain the smaller pests (these will be sent for analysis), ladders, and baits.
2. The kitchen steward has to look for telltale signs of the pests, and these are droppings such as feces and urine, carcasses, smears, footprints, tail swipes, gnawing damages, eggs and egg cases, cast skins, etc.
3. Once done, the kitchen steward then has to place the baits. The most common bait used in restaurants is glue boards with food placed in the middle. Not only is it safe, but this also allows them to know the types of pests that live in the restaurant. Once they know the types of pests, they can then make the proper treatments to stop the pests from growing and multiplying.
4. After placing the baits, sending in the specimens to specialists, and applying the proper treatments, the most important step then takes place. This is proper sanitation. This will include cleaning and sanitizing the areas, and the kitchen steward has to make sure that he has removed all traces of the pests there. Aside from this, they can also place baits to monitor pest growth.

The most important thing that the kitchen steward has to do is to make sure that pest infestation is prevented. For this reason, the problem areas need to cleaned and sanitized as regularly as possible to prevent them from coming back. Furthermore, he also has to make sure that all suspected areas are kept clean and sanitized, too, to deter the pests from invading these areas.

One advice to consider though; if the kitchen steward is going to make use of chemicals, be it non-chemical or chemical pest control methods, he should not do any deep cleaning for two days to the areas so as to allow proper dissemination of the product. Two days of no deep cleaning also makes the product more effective.