As a restaurant owner, you surely are responsible to ensure that your kitchen runs smoothly, right? From food preparation to customer service and maintaining hygiene standards, every detail plays a vital role and contributes to customer satisfaction!
Yet, amidst your busy routine, it’s very natural to overlook one of the most essential components of your kitchen- grease traps! These fixtures have a major role to play when it comes to staying compliant with local regulatory codes!
Proper maintenance of grease traps for commercial kitchens goes beyond mere cleanliness or hygiene compliance. It’s also about following local regulations to prevent any disruptions to your business due to legal or environmental concerns.
But, how can you determine if your grease traps meet the necessary state codes?
This blog will serve as a guide to make you understand the ways your commercial grease traps remain compliant with local regulations! Let’s plunge in for more details.
Why Does Code Compliance Matter?
Local authorities of every county in Ireland have a set of strict guidelines for commercial kitchens. And these rules are not because of some futile reasons! Rather, non-compliance to these state-wide codes can lead to hefty fines and even temporary or permanent closure of your restaurant!
What’s most important is, it can cause severe damage to the environment. Why? Because improper maintenance of grease traps allows fats, oils, and grease (FOG) to enter the sewage system. This increases the chances of blockages and overflows. And needless to say, sewage backups are a dangerous health hazard and can disrupt your business.
Essential Factors to Stay Compliant with Local Codes
1. Frequent inspections and cleaning
Every local regulatory body in Ireland has made it mandatory for commercial kitchens to schedule inspections and cleaning at regular intervals. And being a commercial setup, it’s natural for your establishment to produce high volumes of wastewater on a daily basis.
So, to be on the safe side, hire professional cleaners once, or twice a year for inspections, and commercial grease trap cleaning services. This way, your grease traps stay in optimal working condition, and you also stay compliant with the local codes, thereby steering clear of any unnecessary headaches in the future.
2. Proper disposal of FOG
The Water Industry Act of 1991 prohibits commercial kitchens like restaurants or eateries from discharging any waste products (such as FOG) without treatment into public sewers. Violating this can effectively lead to expensive penalties and even legal issues.
So, you must adhere to proper FOG disposal practices to avoid such situations altogether. The best way to do this is to let the FOG cool down and solidify. Once that’s done, scrape it off and put it in a different container, seal it well, and dump it. That’s the best way to dispose off FOG while staying compliant with the state codes!
3. Installing the right-sized grease trap
However funny this sounds, it’s real. The size of the grease trap is essential to make sure that your compliance game is top-notch! But how can you determine what’s the right size of grease trap you need for your kitchen?
Well, it’s easy. The size of your grease trap is directly proportional to the volume of your commercial kitchen! And if you’re not confident about the calculation, consult with plumbing professionals, or reputed grease trap cleaning services to ensure what’s the correct size of grease trap that you can install in your kitchen.
4. Keeping detailed records of cleaning and maintenance services
Last, but not least, always try to maintain detailed records of your commercial grease trap cleaning and maintenance services. Why?
First of all, it helps you keep track of the cleaning frequency and also helps to identify any potential issues before they escalate and create disruptions in your workflow. This helps reduce your overall expenses related to maintenance and repairs substantially.
Second, it is the biggest proof that you are 100% compliant with local regulatory standards, and therefore, can successfully evade legal jargon, and promote sustainability effectively.
And third, it helps you create a clear audit trail that showcases your strict commitment to responsible waste management practices.
To Conclude
Compliance with local regulatory codes is very much essential to run your restaurant/ coffee shop seamlessly. Not just that, but it also helps you avoid unnecessary legal troubles. This helps protect your reputation in the market and also allows you to focus on expanding your business and customer base effectively!
Also, don’t forget to hire reputed grease trap cleaning companies, as they are the ones who can ensure thorough compliance with state-wide codes during cleaning, which offers you the ultimate peace of mind.
