While you can certainly expect to encounter some flies when enjoying food outside during warm temperatures, no one welcomes the sight of those annoying and elusive insects indoors. It’s unnerving, unhealthy, and irritating. If you run any kind of commercial business where customers and vendors frequent and employees regularly work – whether a local eatery, a national food chain, a warehouse, or an office building – you do not want your business to be rumored as being an unsanitary, fly-infested facility. And it doesn’t take an army of flies to turn customers away; one or two of these relentless insects zooming around a diner’s table all evening is enough to stop the patrons from coming back or referring anyone to your establishment. Fortunately, there is a solution and it’s recommended by an industry watchdog.
The National Sanitation Foundation (NSF International) — an independent, not-for-profit organization founded in the mid-1940s, has developed standards to address and resolve the problem of flies in food service establishments. Committed to being the world’s provider of public health and safety-based risk management solutions, NSF International set the bar for the materials, the design, the construction, and the performance required for approval of air curtains placed in food establishments. The Mars line of air curtains that are designed for commercial businesses meet NSF International’s criteria for approval in eateries and other food service establishments; Mars’ products do a phenomenal job of keeping patrons, employees, and business owners comfortable inside while keeping flies out. Here’s why every food and food service establishment must be a no-fly zone:
Flies explore and eat gross things.
Flies walk on, explore, and eat the fecal matter of deer, dogs, cattle, raccoons, squirrels, and all of the other creatures — great and small — that defecate outdoors. They dine on discharges from an animal’s open wounds and sores. They feast on carcasses, rotting fruit, and other decaying organic matter.
Flies hang out in bad neighborhoods.
Anywhere garbage, filth, and decay exist, you’ll find flies. From atop the belly of a roadkill to your big trash dumpsters behind your restaurant and the garbage cans inside your kitchen (when the back door is left open), flies are attracted to smelly, rotting matter.
Flies spread germs and bacteria.
It should be no surprise that flies spread the germs they carry from one landing spot to another. As a result, they easily transmit many diseases to human beings; these include everything from typhoid fever, dysentery, and cholera, to leprosy and tuberculosis.
Flies fly.
If these incessant flies got around by crawling, perhaps what they ate and where they hung out wouldn’t be so unnerving. The fact is, however, that they are quick, and fast, and fly – thus making it highly probably that they’ll eventually land on a customer’s silverware, plate, table, and menu. They’ll quickly find their way around your kitchen, including landing in sauces, soups, and salads without notice. Once a fly’s filth-covered feet land on something one of your customer’s is eating, you can count on a call from that client the next day, a bad review, or never seeing that customer again because they got a foodborne illness hours after eating your establishment’s fly-tainted food.
Flies first “throw up” on the “food” they are about to eat.
Since their stomach acids break down food matter to make it viable for them to suck up their feasts through their straw-like mouths, flies first regurgitate their stomach contents onto whatever “food” they are about to eat.
Flies can make your establishment fail its inspection.
While a few flies alone may not cause your eatery to get an “F” from the local health inspector, the sight of the insects will lower your overall grade – potentially damaging the chance of repeat business and/or brand new patrons. If your restaurant is already insect-free, the health inspector will look closely to see how you are able to accomplish that feat. Are you using dangerous pesticides? Do you have unsightly sticky strips hanging on your doorways? Or do you have a NSF International-approved Mars Air Curtain discreetly and properly installed in your restaurant?
NSF International-approved Mars Air Curtains have adjustable louvers at the air intake component. This feature enables them to provide optimum operating efficiency 24/7 at your food service establishment. In fact, when the Air Curtains are positioned over refrigeration doors, they can be adjusted to regulate both the velocity and the volume of air — right at the air outlet. As a result, this forms an air “barrier” and instantly balances the cold air inside the refrigerator with the warm air outside. When used as a barrier to keep flies and other insects out of your kitchen’s refrigerators, the louvers can be set at the maximum open position; the full volume of air will create a colder and stronger barrier.
If you have any additional questions about air curtains and commercial fly control, feel free to reach out to us at 866-402-1642 or fill out our online contact form.