Printable daily, weekly and monthly cleaning checklists for the kitchen, front of house and bar, and what to contract out.
By Rob Bruni, founder of OpsEdge Hospitality, twenty years running restaurants, bars, clubs and resorts. Updated November 2026.
A restaurant cleaning checklist does two jobs. It keeps the building safe and ready for an inspector on any day of the year, and it stops cleaning from being the thing that only happens when someone has time. This page gives you five checklists you can print (daily kitchen, daily front of house, daily bar, weekly and monthly deep clean), explains what belongs at each frequency, and covers the jobs you should pay a contractor to do.
Every cleaning task in a restaurant falls into one of five frequencies. Problems start when a monthly job is left to chance or a daily job is treated as optional on a busy night.
| Frequency | What belongs here | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| During the shift | Clean as you go: spills, boards, wiping and sanitizing surfaces, changing sanitizer | Every cook, server and bartender |
| Daily, at close | Everything that touched food or guests that day | Closing crew, checked by the closing manager |
| Weekly | Inside equipment, under and behind, drains, walk in floors | Assigned by name on the schedule |
| Monthly | Deep cleaning: walls, ceilings, vents, coils, dry storage, behind the line | Kitchen manager, on a set day |
| By contract | Hoods and ducts, grease trap, pest control, some equipment service | General manager, with the paperwork on file |
The button prints the five checklists on this page as one page sheets. The daily sheets have a box for each day of the week. The weekly and monthly sheets have a date and initials column.
Prints in black and white on letter or A4 paper. Edit the lists to match your equipment before you laminate anything.
These are closing tasks. The opening cook should walk in to a kitchen that is ready to cook in.
Guests judge the kitchen they cannot see by the dining room and restroom they can.
During service, check restrooms every hour on a posted log. It takes two minutes and it is the complaint guests remember.
The bar opening and closing guide has the full routine, including restocking to par.
Assign each task to a named person and a day. Weekly cleaning that belongs to everyone gets done by no one.
Pick a fixed day, such as the first Monday of the month, and schedule the labor for it. Deep cleaning that waits for a slow night does not happen.
Some jobs need a licensed contractor and a dated record. Keep the invoices and service tags in one binder, because inspectors and insurers ask for them.
| Job | Typical frequency | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hood and duct cleaning | Every three months for high volume cooking such as char broiling, wok cooking or 24 hour operations. Every six months for moderate volume. | The fire code standard (NFPA 96) sets the schedule by type of cooking. Solid fuel cooking needs monthly cleaning. Your fire marshal and insurer have the final say. |
| Grease trap or interceptor | Every one to three months, or when it is a quarter full | Set by your local sewer authority. Keep the pumping manifests. |
| Pest control | Monthly | Keep the service reports and the site map of traps. |
| Fire suppression system | Every six months | Inspection by a licensed company, with a dated tag on the system. |
| Draft beer lines | Every two weeks | Many distributors or a line cleaning service will do this. |
| Ice machine service | At least twice a year | Follow the manufacturer's schedule for cleaning and sanitizing. |
Cleaning removes food and soil you can see. Sanitizing reduces the germs you cannot. A surface has to be cleaned first, because sanitizer does not work through grease.
Check sanitizer strength with test strips each time you mix it. The label on the product gives the correct range, which is typically 50 to 100 parts per million for chlorine and 200 to 400 for quaternary ammonium. Under the FDA Food Code, food contact surfaces and equipment in constant use with food that needs temperature control must be cleaned and sanitized at least every four hours. Record sanitizer checks on the same clipboard as your temperature logs.
The Restaurant Cleaning Schedule is an Excel and Google Sheets workbook with daily schedules for kitchen, bar and front of house, weekly deep cleaning with supervisor verification, monthly and quarterly tasks, a sanitization log and a master task library. Assign tasks once and print the weekly sheets.
See the Cleaning Schedule Health Inspection Self-AuditFor the rest of the opening and closing routine, see the restaurant checklists guide. To write any of these tasks up as a step by step procedure, use the SOP guide.
Every task grouped by how often it is done: clean as you go tasks during the shift, daily closing tasks for the kitchen, front of house, bar and restrooms, weekly tasks such as boiling out fryers and cleaning walk in floors, monthly deep cleaning, and contracted jobs such as hood cleaning and pest control. Each task needs an owner and a sign off.
Most kitchens do a deep clean once a month, covering walls, ceilings, vents, coils, dry storage and the areas behind and under equipment, with smaller deep cleaning tasks such as fryer boil outs and oven interiors done weekly.
Everything that touched food or guests: prep surfaces, cooking equipment, small equipment, sinks, the dish area, floors and trash in the kitchen, plus tables, chairs, menus, service stations, floors and restrooms in the front of house, and the bar top, wells, soda guns and tools at the bar.
It depends on the type of cooking. Under the NFPA 96 fire code standard, high volume operations such as char broiling or wok cooking need hood and duct cleaning every three months, moderate volume operations every six months, and solid fuel cooking every month. Your local fire marshal and insurer set the requirement.
Cleaning removes visible food and soil with detergent and water. Sanitizing uses a chemical solution or heat to reduce germs to safe levels. Surfaces must be cleaned and rinsed first, then sanitized and left to air dry.
Every employee cleans their own station during and after the shift. Weekly and monthly tasks are assigned by name, and the closing manager checks the work against the checklist before the crew leaves.
