Rodent prevention tips for restaurant owners

Abell Pest Control Rodent prevention tips for restaurant owners

Discovering a rat in your kitchen is bad enough. It's even worse for one of your patrons to encounter one while dining. Rats are frightening and unwanted pests that carry several diseases. Consider these tips to keep rats and other rodents out of your kitchen.

Why rodents like restaurants

It's fairly simple. Rodents love to hide out in restaurants because they have two things rats need - food and shelter. Not only do restaurants have these rodent necessities, but they have plenty of them! Most restaurant owners are smart enough to keep their kitchens sanitary. However, rats will mosey into even the cleanest of kitchens. Luckily, there are a few prevention methods to keep these furry nuisances out of your restaurant and away from your patrons.

Rat control tips

  • Look for other insects
    If you run a tight ship at your restaurant and keep the kitchen clean and trash-free, rodents may go looking for other food sources, such as insects. Though it's an unlikely food source, rats are happy to eat a variety of bugs. So, if you have another type of pest running through your kitchen, rats are likely to follow. Even rodents that are happy to live and eat insects outside will follow them inside if they want to keep eating.

  • Discover any openings
    Openings are the greatest reason why rats may invade a restaurant kitchen. Rodents can wiggle through the smallest of holes and openings to get into a good-smelling kitchen, Eat Out magazine noted. Like humans, rats can be drawn by scent. Though their eyesight is weak, they rely greatly on their nose. Survey your entire property for openings if you can. However, if the building is rented by several businesses, rodents may crawl from other properties' openings through walls and into your restaurant. If that's the case, prevent them by closing any openings or cracks in walls.

  • Check out bathrooms
    These rodents have also been found in toilets. Rats have a habit of living in sewers, especially in metropolitan areas. From a sewer, they can crawl up sewer pipes and potentially into your toilet, the New York Department of Health stated. One of the quickest ways to get a restaurant in trouble is having a customer encounter a rat in the bathroom. Since this is a common problem, use plastic one-way valves on your pipes to only allow waste to go down without rats coming up.

These are just a few common pest management tips restaurant owners should know to keep rats out of their kitchen.


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