Keeping white kitchen towels from becoming discolored isn’t easy. Restaurants and food trucks are tough environments to stay clean. Especially when you might relying these versatile towels to wipe up grease, clean food prep areas, or utilize as a make-shift oven mitt. The uses of these towels are many and you’ll need a lot of them. It’s not easy to keep these white towels white!
There’s a reason most restaurants don’t use brilliant white tablecloths. Doing the laundry is a significant added expense and something you’ll find exclusively at high-brow eateries. There are added costs to clean, replace, and added labor associated with handling linen tablecloths and napkins. Although maintaining clean towels is less work than the prior, the basic maintenance is the same.
Aside from improving the appearance of towels, you’ll need to keep them clean from a health perspective as well. The last thing you want to do is clean up a kitchen with a greasy towel. Appearance is a side benefit of running a tight ship!
But how do you keep these towels that sparkling white long term through all the daily wear and tear? In this blog post we’ll outline the three options you have to ensure you’ve got spotless towels in your food truck or restaurant. Choose the option or combination of options that are best for your situation.
How do you keep restaurant towels clean?
Replace Often
One of the secrets that isn’t really a secret is that no matter how much care you put into washing towels, you’ll need to replace these regularly. Between grease, sauce, and the occasional coffee stain, these linens are put through the ringer daily. At a certain point, no magical combination of OXI Clean, bleach, or soaking is going to save these things.
Thankfully, you can buy 12-dozen Terry Rag restaurant cleaning towels for under $50 with free shipping on Amazon. These work towels are not intended to be kept forever so don’t make this mistake. Another tip is to only use well-worn towels to wipe up grease. After wiping up grease throw the used towels into the trash receptacle. Wiping up grease will reduce the life span of any restaurant towel.
Hire a Towel Service
If you want an industrial level clean, hiring a towel service can be an effective use of monthly spend. Many of these laundry services will pick up dirty linens at your restaurant, minimizing the hours needed to keep things clean. If you have a small food operation, like a food truck, you may be able to pay for these services for around $100 monthly. You can find nearby commercial laundry services by searching Press Cleaners or heading to Google to find providers near you. These services are available in nearly every U.S. city.
Aside from a time savings, a commercial service will use their equipment and products including lye to wash your towels. Lye, will decompose grease and make the gunk easier to rinse off. Even if you’re vigilant and pre-soak your greasy towels, you do not want too much of this gunky, clogging stuff getting into your home washing machine. You also don’t want to mix your families clothes with restaurant linens in the event you plan to bring items home to wash. It’s not worth your time for the amount of money you’ll save!
DIY Wash Process
Not ready for professional laundry services yet? Follow the steps below to extend the life of your towels.
Step 1 – Divide and Conquer: Separate your lightly soiled and stained or greasy towels into three separate plastic bins.
1.) The lightly used towels can go straight into the wash. Put them on a cold rinse cycle and off you go.
2.) Food or beverage stained towels go into their own bin.
3.) Greasy towels go into the third container.
Step 2 – Pre-Cleaning Rinse
The food stained and greasy towels will be soaked in cold water. After about 15 minutes, take the towels of of their respective bins.
Step 3 – Use Bleach or OXI Clean.
Add bleach if it’s safe with your towels… It will be for most kitchen towels. Many folks also swear by the effectiveness of OXI Clean so that’s another option. Soak for another 15 – 20 minutes and then rinse off water. Finally, rinse off the towels with clean cool water.
Step 4 – Hot Wash
Finally, was the towels on the hot cycle using your detergent of choice. After the towels come out of the wash you should see brilliant and desirable looking restaurant towels.
We hope this post has helped to outline the steps needed to keep your towels clean! As mentioned previously, even the best most industrial level clean won’t keep these linens spotless forever so plan to replace your kitchen towels every 3 – 6 months.