A shared kitchen cleaning checklist splits the cleaning two ways: what each member does before leaving their booking, and what the kitchen's staff do every day and every week. Without the split, every member assumes the last one cleaned the steamer, and the kitchen manager finds out at 6 a.m. Below is what goes on each list, a filled-in week, how to handle a member who leaves a mess, and a free checklist with an issues log. It works for any commercial kitchen; the shared kitchen part is who does which line.
The short version
- Each use: members clean, rinse and sanitize their tables, equipment and shared tools before leaving.
- Daily: staff clean the floors, drains, three-compartment sink, trash and grease, and check the cooler and freezer.
- Weekly: hood filters, behind and under equipment, cooler shelves and gaskets.
- Every line has a tick for each day, and a name at the bottom of the sheet.
- Log what wasn't done, who was booked, and what was done about it.
- Put the cleaning fee in the member agreement, and charge it every time.
- TaroStack keeps your own checks on batches and counts, and members' goods apart. More below.
The checklist
| Area | Task | How often |
|---|---|---|
| Each station | Clear, wash, rinse and sanitize the work tables | Each use |
| Each station | Wipe and sanitize the range top, oven handles and knobs | Each use |
| Each station | Empty and clean the fryer catch pan; skim the oil | Each use |
| Each station | Return shared tools washed, rinsed and sanitized | Each use |
| Sinks | Clean and sanitize the prep sink; stock handwashing sinks | Each use |
| Sinks | Drain, scrub and sanitize the three-compartment sink | Daily |
| Floors | Sweep and mop; clear the floor drains | Daily |
| Walk-in cooler | Check and log the temperature; pull anything unlabeled or out of date | Daily |
| Walk-in freezer | Check and log the temperature | Daily |
| Dry storage | Sweep; nothing on the floor; look for pests | Daily |
| Trash and grease | Empty trash and recycling; check the grease container | Daily |
| Hood | Wipe surfaces; clean the filters | Weekly |
| Walk-in cooler | Wash shelves and floor; check the door gasket | Weekly |
| Equipment | Clean behind and under ranges and mixers | Weekly |
| Restroom and hall | Clean and stock the restroom; mop the hall | Daily |
Your health department's food code says how sanitizers are mixed and tested, and how often equipment has to be cleaned; follow its numbers where they're stricter. A plain cleaning log for one kitchen is in cleaning log template.
When a member leaves a mess
Shenandoah Commons Kitchen, a made-up shared kitchen in Harrisonburg, Virginia, I use in these examples, checks each station after each booking. On November 3, station 2 is left with a wet steamer and an unsanitized table after a member's evening slot. Staff clean it, log it in the issues sheet with the member's name, and add the $50 cleaning fee from the member agreement to the next bill. The log matters as much as the fee: the same member three times in a month is a conversation, not a coincidence. What goes in a member agreement is in commissary kitchen cost.
The cooler and freezer checks
The daily cooler and freezer check is two jobs: logging the temperature, and pulling anything unlabeled or past its date. In a shared kitchen, an unlabeled tub is nobody's until it's somebody's problem, so the rule that unlabeled items are thrown out after notice needs the daily check behind it. A temperature log on its own is in temperature log template.
Get the checklist
Download the shared kitchen cleaning checklist. Two sheets: cleaning, with each task, its area and how often, a column for each day with ✓, ✗ or n/a, a count of the days it was done, and lines for who checked and the week; and issues, for anything not done, who was booked and what was done about it. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
A checklist on the wall says the cooler was checked. It doesn't say what's in it: whose goods are on which shelf, what's out of date, and what a member who stopped paying left behind. That's an inventory question, not a cleaning one.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps your own checks on batches and counts, and members' goods apart.
Checks where they belong. Counts and batch records carry fields of your own, tick boxes, numbers and initials, so a temperature check or a cleaning sign-off can sit on the count of the walk-in or on the batch it belongs to.
Members' goods, kept apart. With We make or keep goods for clients turned on, each member's goods in the cooler and dry storage are their own, counted where they sit, and released when they take them, so the daily pull of out-of-date items starts from a list.
Dates and holds. Goods with use-by dates show what's close, and anything questionable can be held, kept out of use, until it's sorted. How expiry tracking works is in what is expired stock.
| The job | Clipboard | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Whose tub is this | A strip of tape | Every item says whose it is |
| What's out of date in the walk-in | Read every label | Use-by dates, earliest first |
| The walk-in check | A tick on a sheet | A field on the count |
| A member's goods when they leave | Unknown | Their goods, counted and released |
Keeping members' goods is on Standard at $99 a month; counts, lots and expiry are on every plan, from $49. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.