Cleaning and sanitising

What you are being asked to do

A food business has to keep its rooms and equipment clean, and the people handling food have to work in a way that does not spread contamination. The Food Standards Agency puts it in shift language: clear spills as you go, clean and disinfect between tasks especially after raw food, and use products that are suitable for food surfaces at the dilution and contact time on the label. Safer Food, Better Business treats cleaning as a safe method with a schedule, not as a poster above the sink.

The schedule says what is cleaned, how often, and by whom. Your job is to do the task in front of you properly and to initial only what you actually did. Designing the rota is a manager's job. If a job on your section cannot be done because the chemical has run out or a machine is down, you say so. You do not sign the sheet and leave the slicer dirty.

If your pack names a particular product, dilution and contact time, those beat a habit you brought from another kitchen. Scottish businesses should also follow Food Standards Scotland's guidance for their premises. A stricter house rule always wins over the general method on this page.

Clean, then disinfect

Stage one is detergent and hot water, or the detergent half of a product your chart allows. You are removing grease, crumbs, batter and sauce. A sanitiser cannot kill through a film of fat. If the board still feels slippery, you have not finished stage one.

Stage two is the disinfectant or sanitiser, on a surface that is already visibly clean. Leave it for the contact time on the label. That wait is the kill step. Spraying and wiping in one motion wets the board and removes the chemical before it has worked. Contact times on kitchen products are often somewhere between 30 seconds and five minutes. Read the bottle you have, not a time you remember from a course.

Some products are a combined detergent and disinfectant, used as your chart describes. They are not an excuse to skip the dirt. You still remove the visible soil first, then apply the product so it can sit for its contact time. The Food Standards Agency also says food-contact surfaces should be rinsed afterwards when the instructions require it, so you are not leaving chemical on a board that will touch food. Air-drying or a clean disposable towel is the finish. The same cloth you used on the raw board is not the towel.

Look for a disinfectant that is suitable for food-contact surfaces. Labels that meet BS EN 1276 or BS EN 13697 are the codes the Food Standards Agency points businesses to. You are not expected to memorise the standard. You are expected to use the product the business bought for this job, at the dilution on the wall chart, and to tell a manager if someone has refilled the bottle with something else.

When you clean during the shift

Closing is too late for most of the risk. Bacteria and allergens move when the kitchen is busiest, which is when people are tempted to wipe less.

• After raw meat, poultry, fish or eggs, and before anything that will not be cooked again. The board, knife, container and the bench they touched get the two-stage clean before salad, bread, cooked meat or an allergy order uses that space.
• Between an allergen job and the next plate. A smear of pesto, a dusting of flour or a trace of yoghurt is invisible and still matters. The decision about what the customer was promised sits in the allergen module. The clean equipment that promise depends on is this one.
• When something spills. Clear it at once. A drip from raw chicken on the fridge handle is everyone's problem within a minute.
• Before you start a ready-to-eat task in a space that was used for something else. "It looks empty" is not a check. If you did not see it cleaned, clean it.
• At the end of your section. Surfaces, sinks you have used, and the tools you want the next person to trust. Bins emptied before they overflow onto the lid you then touch with food-prep hands.

Keep enough clear bench that you are not forced to plate on a dirty corner. A crowded section is how a clean tray gets put down on a raw board "for a second".

How to clean a board, step by step

This is the movement officers often ask you to show, because it is the same movement as a worktop, a knife and a probe.

• Scrape loose food into the food bin, not into the wash-hand basin and not onto the floor.
• Wash with hot water and detergent until grease and debris have gone. Rinse if your method says to rinse between stages.
• Apply sanitiser to the whole surface, including the edges and the handle of the knife. Start the contact time. Do something else useful that does not touch that surface. Do not fan it dry with a dirty cloth.
• After the contact time, rinse if the label requires it, then air-dry or use a clean disposable towel.
• Store the board where it cannot be splashed by the raw area. A "clean" board leant against the bin is a dirty board.

A dishwasher that is rated to disinfect can be the second stage for knives, boards and utensils if they come out visibly clean and the machine is running the cycle your manager has checked. Overloaded baskets, a cold cycle, or a machine that is error-flagging do not count. If the dishwasher is down, you go back to the two-stage sink method. You do not rinse knives under the tap and call them done.

Probe thermometers are food-contact equipment. Wipe or wash visible food off, disinfect the probe, and let the contact time happen before it goes into the next dish. A probe that has just been in raw mince will push bacteria into a cooked chicken if you only give it a wipe on your apron.

Cloths, brushes and mops

A cloth is a bus for bacteria. It picks up whatever it wiped and puts it on the next surface, including your hands. Disposable cloths or paper are the safer default for food-contact benches, and they are thrown away when they are soiled, not rinsed and used on the salad board.

If you use reusable cloths, your kitchen should be able to tell which cloth is for raw areas and which is for ready-to-eat areas. Colour is the usual system. A single cloth "because we are short today" cancels the system. Reusable cloths are changed often and washed hot. They do not live in a ball in the sink, and they do not dry over the oven handle where everyone grabs them.

The floor mop does not come onto the bench. The toilet cleaning kit does not come into the kitchen at all. If those cloths and buckets are stored in the same cupboard as the prep cloths, tell the manager. Separation only works if the equipment is stored apart as well as used apart. Raw food, ready-to-eat food, and the cleaning tools that touch them are part of the same story as the cross-contamination module.

Chemicals, dilution and where they live

More chemical is not a better clean. Too weak and it does not disinfect in the stated time. Too strong and it can leave a residue, damage a surface, and irritate skin. Use the measuring method on the chart: a pump, a cap, a line on a bottle. "A glug" is how contact time stops meaning anything.

Keep chemicals away from food, in labelled containers. Never decant them into drinks bottles, even if you "know" it is sanitiser. The next person will not. Do not mix products together to make them stronger. Some mixtures give off dangerous gas. If the label says wear gloves, wear them. If a bottle has lost its label, it is not used. Hand it to the manager.

Store food-safe sanitiser where prep staff can reach it, and store oven cleaner and floor chemicals where they cannot be grabbed by mistake. A spray that smells harsh is not automatically the one for a chopping board.

The places that spread more than they look

Officers and managers spend less time admiring the middle of a shiny floor than looking at the things hands touch and the things that stay damp.

• Anything a hand touches between tasks. The handles of cold stores, the taps, light switches, door push-plates, equipment buttons and the basin where you wash your hands. People move from raw work to ready-to-eat work and take those surfaces with them. They belong in the clean-as-you-go habit, not only on the closing list.
• Tools with seams. Can openers, blender jugs and seals, slicers, mixer bowls, and the probe. Food dries in the joint. A quick wipe of the flat face leaves the joint dirty.
• Fridge seals and shelves. Crumbs and spilled meat juice sit in the seal all week. If that job is on the weekly list, it still needs a real clean when you are the person given it, including the seal you have to bend open to see.
• The probe, the scales and the pass. They touch every course. They are cleaned between raw and ready-to-eat, not only when they look marked.

Extraction filters, the floor under the fryer, and the wall behind a movable bench are real jobs. They are usually on a named day because they take time. If that day is yours, the filter comes out and gets cleaned. A tick while the filter stays in place is the record that causes trouble later, not the dirt itself.

What an initial means

The schedule is evidence that cleaning happened. Initial the task you completed, at the time you completed it. Do not initial the slicer because the closer always does, and do not let someone else sign your name. If a task was not needed because you were closed, leave it blank or mark it the way your sheet says. A full sheet of initials on a day the kitchen was shut is as damaging as a blank sheet on a day it was open.

If you cannot complete a job, write that down or tell the manager before you leave. Running out of sanitiser, a blocked sink, or a dishwasher that will not heat are reasons to stop and report, not reasons to pretend the method still happened.

Worked example

A sandwich shop finishes breakfast bacon at 11:00 and starts lunch salads at 11:10. One person is on the bench. The dishwasher is showing a fault light. There is one reusable cloth, and it is the one that wiped the bacon boards.

The unsafe version is familiar. The boards get a spray of sanitiser and a wipe with that cloth. The contact grill is scraped and left greasy because "the heat kills it". The schedule is initialled at 11:05 for boards, grill, slicer and fridge handles, including the slicer, which nobody has touched since yesterday's cheese. Salads are then built on the same boards.

The safe version is slower by a few minutes and is the one the business can explain.

• Bacon debris is scraped into the bin. Boards and knives are washed in hot soapy water until the grease has gone.
• Because the dishwasher cannot be trusted, they are sanitised in the sink. The product chart says one cap in a litre, five minutes contact. They sit for five minutes. They are rinsed, because this product's label says to rinse food-contact items, and they air-dry while the bench is washed.
• The cloth is bagged for a hot wash. A disposable cloth is used for the bench, then thrown away. It is not used on the raw-bacon area and then on the salad boxes.
• The contact grill is degreased first. Sanitiser on top of fat would have done nothing. The grill is cool enough to clean safely. If it were still too hot to clean properly, salads would not be plated against it until it was done.
• Fridge handles and the tap are done before the first salad, not at 4pm. The slicer is not initialled. The closer will do it when it is actually cleaned, or the supervisor will be told it was missed at breakfast.

At 11:25 the first salad goes on a dry, sanitised board. The fault on the dishwasher is written on the shift note so the next person does not assume the machine is disinfecting. That note is worth more than a full column of initials.

What a manager or environmental health officer checks

Inspectors mark how clean the premises are as its own topic, and a dirty slicer also makes them doubt the rest of what you tell them. They use their eyes, then they ask you to talk.

• Can you clean this board the way you would between raw bacon and a sandwich? They may ask you to do it, not to describe a course you once sat.
• What is the contact time of the product in the bottle by the sink? If you do not know, can you show them the chart that says?
• Which cloth is for raw food, and where is it now? A single damp cloth on the salad bench is a finding, even if the floor is mopped.
• Are chemicals labelled, diluted as instructed, and stored away from food? Is anything in a drinks bottle?
• Does the schedule match the room? They will look under the bench, at fridge seals, at the slicer, and at taps. A signed sheet that says those are done, while they are visibly dirty, is worse than a gap you can explain.
• Is the wash-hand basin free of equipment, with soap and a way to dry hands? That basin is not your pot wash.

Managers should be able to point to the same things without warning: the product, the chart, the cloth rule, and a schedule that has honest gaps. The cleaning safe method inside Safer Food, Better Business is what a lot of small kitchens are measured against. It matches the visit only when the person on the bench can show the two-stage clean when asked.

You might also be asked why the middle of the floor matters less than the fridge handle. The handle is a hand-contact point. Every person who touches it between raw food and ready-to-eat food moves bacteria around the kitchen. Floors still get cleaned. They are just not the first place contamination reaches the next sandwich.

Check your understanding

Doing this as part of your job?

If your workplace uses Localyn, ask your manager for your personal training link — completing modules through it records the training in the store's food safety evidence automatically. Managers: issue links from the Training page in your dashboard.

Related pages

Cleaning schedulesPest controlCleaning schedulePubs