Free checklist
Cafe Cleaning Checklist
The checklist (11 items)
Written as observable actions, so two trainers scoring the same shift land in the same place. In CrewSharp this is the Cleaning Rounds checklist in the Café / Coffee shop starter set, filed under Bar, and every item here is editable.
- 1Mixed sanitiser buckets to the correct strengthCritical
- 2Tested sanitiser strength with a test strip
- 3Washed, rinsed and sanitised dishes in that order
- 4Put clean dishes away once they were dry
- 5Checked and cleaned the restrooms on schedule
- 6Restocked restroom soap and paper
- 7Wiped tables and chairs after customers left
- 8Swept the floor during quiet periods
- 9Put out a wet floor sign for spills
- 10Emptied bins before they overflowed
- 11Signed the cleaning log after each round
Print it, score it on a clipboard, or open it in Sheets. No email required.
What usually goes wrong
Sanitiser strength is the critical item because a bucket that looks fine can be doing nothing. The test strip is the only way to know, and it is the step that disappears first when the shop gets busy.
The items a good total should not outweigh
- Mixed sanitiser buckets to the correct strength
When to sign someone off
A workable bar for this checklist: no critical items missed, a score above a line you set for Cleaning Rounds specifically rather than one number for the whole building, and observed on more than one shift with at least one of them busy. Then date it, so it can expire.
That last part is the one people skip. A sign-off with no date cannot be re-checked, which means a year later you have a record that says somebody was ready once.
Other café / coffee shop checklists
The rest of the set, if you are building out the whole floor rather than one position.
Common questions
Should cleaning be its own checklist or a closing task?
It works better as both. The closing list catches the end-of-day work, while giving cleaning rounds their own checklist is what makes the through-the-day upkeep somebody's actual job.
What should be on a cafe cleaning checklist?
The 11 items above cover it: mixed sanitiser buckets to the correct strength, tested sanitiser strength with a test strip, washed, rinsed and sanitised dishes in that order, and the rest of the list. Keep it in that range. Fewer and a pass proves very little; many more and trainers stop finishing it during a real shift.
Which items should count as critical?
On this checklist, one item is marked critical: mixed sanitiser buckets to the correct strength. Missing one means not ready, regardless of the total score, because these are the failures that cannot be corrected after the fact.
Scoring it is the part that lasts
Run this Cleaning Rounds checklist on a tablet between rushes and CrewSharp keeps the rest: who is signed off, when it was last checked, and which item your crew misses most.
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