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We all like to go out to a restaurant once in a while to have a nice meal. The food is cooked by someone else, the dishes are washed by someone else, and the table is set by someone else. Once in a while, something as simple as going out to eat at a restaurant can feel amazing, especially if the food is good. However, since everything is done by someone else, we are trusting the hygiene of others, and if said hygiene fails, it is clearly a problem that needs to be dealt with.
Usually, nothing says a restaurant lacks hygiene quite like a cockroach. In fact, the restaurant can be as clean as it gets, with regular hygiene checkups and incredible control, but if there is one cockroach out there ruining a meal, then the reputation of the whole restaurant is going down, sinking really hard, because if a customer gets a cockroach on his plate, his friends will know, and the word will spread like crazy.
But how can even a clean restaurant have a roach problem? How can a restaurant that keeps things clean, and checks for dirt every day, gets rid of leftovers, and so on, have a problem usually linked to the lack of hygiene? It’s simple, in fact, roaches can survive on very little, all they need is water, food and warmth, and they can just live anywhere. Wall cracks, behind and under furniture, under the sinks and so on. Since they survive on very little, the roaches aren’t really “kicked out” just because the place is cleaned regularly, they can survive in small places.
This, however, doesn’t explain how the roaches get to the restaurant, but the real question should be, how wouldn’t they get there? What roaches usually seek, is moisture, darkness and warmth. In a restaurant, especially in the kitchen, this is available almost everywhere. The food being thrown around everywhere and circulating from here to there is a big plus for them. They don’t understand the process, all they know is there is food going into that incredible hot box, than going out, staying in this white round thing, to be picked up and go somewhere else. It’s just food moving around, warmth everywhere and moisture everywhere (especially in the dishwashing area, where hot water goes everywhere to get things clean quickly).
People can bring cockroaches from the streets, from their own homes, from objects that have their little friends present (perhaps even as eggs) and like this, these insects manage to expand their territory everywhere. Restaurants, in particular, have people coming and going, every day and every night. They just hitchhike with people, and go from place to place.
This only explains how cockroaches come, and why they stay. Why don’t restaurants just get rid of them? They could just spray some poison in the whole place, from time to time, and that’s it! No more roaches. Or some other chemical, one that wouldn’t harm the food (so they wouldn’t have to move it from their place), and one that wouldn’t be harmful for other animals and humans. This all sounds really simple, but of course, things are not that easy. Cockroaches have been on this Earth for quite some time, 350 million years (Humans have been on Earth for only 2 million years), so they have been around for a while, they’re not going away that easily. Over the years, these little guys have developed resistance to a lot of chemicals out there in the nature, since they have been exposed to toxins in plants and vegetation for so long.
Still, this doesn’t mean that we can’t get rid of them. They might resist a lot of things, but not us. However, they have been around for so long, that they won’t really allow things to end easily, so they keep on developing resistance to other chemicals, pretty much the same way the flu virus never has a final cure, cockroaches never have a final solution.
As far as restaurants go, there are solutions, and they do have ways to keep things in check. However, these ways are never foolproof, and even though they might take every measure available to reduce and eradicate the problem, the cockroaches are not an easy problem to get rid of. The best thing restaurants can do, besides the obvious use of pest control measures, is to cut off their food supply (throw away the trash more frequently, keep everything in the fridge except when it’s being used, and so on) and to try and cut off their comfort. If the roaches can’t easily access food, warmth and moisture, they will surely move on to somewhere they can. Even though these changes will surely affect the restaurants modus operandis, these are required measures that need to be taken to assure that the cockroaches will move to another home, leaving the restaurant itself alone, and saving its reputation, and ultimately, its future.
Alliance Pest Services specializes in roach removal and prevention programs for homes, commercial buildings and restaurants. Call today for free roach pest evaluation.
