Don’t let those pesky insects ruin the atmosphere of your restaurant
Your patrons are your best form of advertisement. Whether they post a review online about their experience at your eatery, write comments accompanied with pics on their social media platforms regarding their visit to your restaurant, or simply phone a friend, what actual customers share about your establishment can make or break your business. As a restaurateur, you count on repeat business. Unlike a vacuum repair company or a tuxedo shop where a customer may visit maybe once in a number of years (or once in a lifetime!), your local café, pub, family restaurant, or national food chain depends on your patrons not only returning frequently, but also bringing friends, family, and colleagues with them each time they do. The surest way to stop a new customer from writing a rave review or a loyal one from returning is to allow flies, dust, pesticides, and other potentially-toxic contaminants into your establishment.
The Problem: Flies
Of all the bothersome irritants that currently find their way inside your restaurant every time a patron, employee, or vendor enters or leaves, it is the fly that is the most worrisome. Before they enter your place, flies have already landed on and eaten lots of disgusting, unsanitary things, including: the fecal matter of animals, discharges from an animal’s wounds, carcasses, and other decaying matter. In addition, their own fecal matter can quickly litter your tables and floor surfaces. As a result, they spread germs and bacteria that are easily and quickly transferred to humans. What makes it worse is that once they are inside your eatery, it is more difficult to control them and stop them. You certainly don’t want your customers seeing gross sticky fly strips hanging in your restaurant’s kitchen or dead, swatted flies on windowsills. Need another reason to keep these flies at bay? How about the fact that they can not only stop you from getting an “A+” rating from your local health inspector, but also cause you to close your doors temporarily (or permanently) depending on the size and scope of infestation! If an inspector enters your establishment and is constantly shooing away flies or observing them travel from your kitchen’s dishware to its cutting boards and its raw meat, you can count on getting a poor rating.
The Solution: Air Curtains
The good news is – all of this is avoidable. When you invest in quality air curtains for all of your entranceways (backdoors, receiving doors, front entrances, and drive-thru windows), you can rest assured:
- your patrons will come back (and bring their friends),
- you’ll get great reviews on the cleanliness of your restaurant, and
- your inspector will have no cause to write about contaminants in his report.
Air curtains are mounted above your doors’ openings and release a high-velocity stream of air barrier – invisible to the human eye — that stops flies and other bugs with wings from entering your establishment. They enhance sanitation and prevent fly infiltration. High-quality air curtains are tested and certified by the National Sanitation Foundation (NSF), the independent, not-for-profit organization that developed standards to address and resolve the problem of flies in food establishments.
Top Manufacturers: Mars Air and Berner International
Both Mars Air and Berner International’s air curtains meet the (high) bar set by NSF International in all facets of their products — from the materials used, the design of the air curtains, and how they are manufactured, to their performance in food establishments. Investing in the best air curtains from the get-go will save you the headache and hassle of having to replace them, regularly request service calls on them, or wonder why you are still seeing lots of flies zooming over the heads of your patrons and walking across the tables. Two manufacturers, in particular, offer the ultimate in fly prevention and extermination – Mars Air and Berner International. If your establishment also includes a drive-thru service, both Mars and Berner have designed air curtains specifically for drive-thru windows – not only eliminating insect ingress, but also reducing the amount of air conditioned or heated air from escaping every time your employees open the window. While the ultimate goal may be to eliminate the visits from unwanted flies, air curtains typically pay for themselves in less than 24 months by preventing 75 percent of your restaurant’s cool or warm air to escape.
The most longstanding and successful restaurants in the hospitality industry have leaders at the helm who are proactive-thinking. Just because you don’t have a fly problem today does not mean your location will never have to deal with construction dust, insects, or pesticides from neighboring businesses or homes. It takes just one fly landing on a sandwich or a straw to stop a patron from ever returning. You can easily eliminate the potential for the problem with air curtains.
If you are considering using air doors as insect control for your business, the experts at Air Door Distributors are ready to help. We can assist you in determining the right air curtain for your restaurant. For more information, call us today at 866-402-1642 or fill out our online contact form.