Clean it up for the Rush By: Roy Bergold I went into a large chain restaurant the other day because my wife wanted ice cream and the drive-thru was mobbed. Interestingly, the lobby was almost empty. I now know why. The inside of that place was filthy. Stuff on the floors, on the tables, and all over the kitchen. It was awe-inspiring how bad the situation was, and no one seemed to care. No wonder everyone was in a car. Needless to say, I will never go back. So this month’s topic is cleaning. As that famous song once said, “Grab a bucket and mop. Scrub the bottom and top. There is nothing so clean. As my burger machine.” McDonald’s thought clean was important enough to do a 60-second, award-winning commercial. And it is.  The quality of the food can be off if the chef is having a bad day. The service can be off if the server is having a bad day. And the value can be off if the owner is having a bad day. But if the clean is off, the customer will have a bad day, and that is unforgivable. Cleanliness is the most important of the tenets to running a good restaurant. In the early days of my career at McDonald’s I saw some pretty scary things, but the scariest had to do with cleanliness. Once while driving around the back of the store, I saw the back door fly open and two terrified squirrels come flying out with an assistant manager hot on their paws, blasting away with a 22. Do I want to eat in that restaurant? Time for a few ideas about getting and keeping your place clean:     * Take an unannounced tour of your store. Look it over outside. Some fresh paint can do wonders. Go inside and do the same. Take notes. Look at everything as if you were a customer and simply ask yourself if you would eat here. Now fix it.     * Assign your crew areas to keep clean. If a person is responsible for a specific area, pride will see to it that the job is done. Rotate responsibilities so that one person isn’t stuck with the hard stuff all the time.     * On the ranch we have a hard and fast rule: If you open a gate, you close it. Or you go find the horse or wait for him to come back to the barn for dinner. (Horses aren’t so dumb.) Apply the same rule in... Read More