8 More Mistakes Your Staff Could Be Making

Following on from our previous blog post 5 mistakes Your Staff Could Be Making - here are another 8.

These all go a long way to prolonging the life of your dishwashers and glasswashers and making your kitchen run more efficiently. 

1. Not cleaning out the wash arm jets. If this is not done regularly, then the dishes will not be cleaned. The wash water has got to pass through the wash jets with enough pressure to spin the wash arms to ensure an even wash for all of the dishes. Again, with a glass washer be careful of broken glass.
2. Not cleaning out the rinse arm jets. If it is the rinse arms that are clogged up, then this is usually a sign of a much more serious problem. Have staff clean them out but report it if it happens regularly. It may be that the manifold is split, and the wash and rinse water is mixing, or the rinse boost pump impellor is starting to break up and work its way around the rinse system. In either case you will need a repair carried out by a service engineer.
3. Ignorant of the fact that there is a top wash and rinse arm set. We see this so often. Even seasoned staff can fail to realise that there are top wash and rinse arms. If no one knows they are there, then they can get clogged up and neglected. Sometimes they can remain like that for years and staff just live with the fact that the dishes are not that clean. This is common in restaurants that have a high turnover of staff.
4. Not checking chemical bottles have enough in them. When the chemical bottles are allowed to run empty, the pumps will draw air. If you have an external dosing unit and staff know how to prime the chemicals back up, then that’s not too bad. However, if not then by the time the staff realise that the dishes or glasses are not clean then it is too late. It will take at least several washes to get the new chemicals primed back into the machine again. Depending on the machine you have, you may be able to press program buttons on the machine to prime up the chemicals, but if not then this may mean that it’s the same basket of dishes going through the machine until they are clean, or dishes being put back out while still dirty.
5. Chemicals are in the wrong bottles. Detergent tubing in the rinse aid bottle and rinse aid tubing in the detergent bottle. This leaves a cloudy film on glasses and a detergent residue on plates as caustic is now being fed through the rinse. If left unchecked the detergent can cause a lot of damage to the internal rinse system, especially the boiler element if the detergent has caustic as a property. In a glasswasher, pints of beer or lager will not be able to hold a head when poured.
6. Rinse aid being poured into the wash tank of the machine when the pump is not working. The rinse aid pump injects rinse aid into the boiler system for the final rinse at the end of the cycle. This cannot be done manually. If staff pour the rinse aid into the wash tank like they may detergent, then they are as well as pouring it down the drain – it is a waste of money and good rinse aid is not cheap.
7. Overloading the wash basket. Dishes can’t be reached properly by the wash and rinse jets and so come out dirty. Staff will have to rewash most of the dishes or ignore the problem and have dirty dishes as a result.
8. Under loading the wash basket. This is a waste of water, energy and chemicals and staff are better to keep the half empty basket until there are more dishes before putting the machine through a cycle.

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