Top 5 Common Challenges with Cleaning Supermarkets & Retail Stores

Operating a retail store or supermarket involves numerous challenges that can impact the success of your business. These challenges can range from managing staff to ensuring the cleanliness and safety of your store and customers.

To help you navigate these supermarket cleaning challenges, we have compiled a list of the top five common issues faced in the retail industry, along with our suggested best-practise solutions to consider.

Challenge 1: Providing a safe environment for customers

Cleanliness isn’t just about keeping customers happy, it’s also about keeping them safe. Reducing hazards and providing a safe environment is paramount. The main goal is to reduce the chance of injury from slippery floors or spills, often straight after you have mopped your floors.

The solution:

One of the most effective ways to safely clean your floors is by using a mechanical floor scrubber rather than conventional string or spaghetti mops. Choosing a good floor scrubber will ensure your floors dry in 10-30 seconds versus up to 15 minutes, reducing “wet-time risk” by over 90%.

You can also further keep your customers safe by reducing trip hazards, self-auditing your store and removing any safety concerns where you can. Loose cables and displays with protruding sections that could cause a fall are common and easily fixed issues. If you have floor mats, ensure they are low profile to reduce tripping risk, or consider using an adhesive backed mat . An adhesive backed mat will reduce trip hazards as the edges do not curl or lift.

It’s important to keep in mind that whilst theinitial outlay for commercial cleaning equipment may be expensive, it could save you hundreds of thousands in the future on litigation costs.

See our article on further tips to manage slippery floors.

Challenge 2: Maintaining high store presentation

To ensure the overall customer experience is positive and memorable for your store visitors, it is essential to maintain a clean, tidy and professional space. A positive customer experience will be influenced by the overall appearance of your retail environment and has a direct impact on the purchasing behaviour of clientele.

By providing your customers with a clean, fresh and safe environment, you are guaranteeing great reviews and repeat business.

The Solution:

We believe that a complete clean is imperative for high store presentation. Complete cleaning is considering all four dimensions of your retail environment which includes the walls, floors, air quality and touchpoint surfaces on furniture, shelves, and checkouts.

When it comes to cleaning the walls, it doesn’t just stop in the store. It’salso important to keep toilet walls and cubicles spotless as they can harbour bacteria and germs which can transfer into other areas of the business. Cleaning walls and even floors in these areas can be easily done with a microfibre cloth and disinfectant spray, or a foaming washsuch as the i-spray if you have large areas to clean.

Scuff marks on floors can also make a store feel dirty, so it’s important to clean and polish your floorsdaily. It’shuman nature for our eyes to naturally be drawn down – so if the floors are dirty your customers will most likely notice.

Bad smells and poor air quality are also deterrents when it comes to the supermarket cleaning. So to keep any bad odours at bay, ensure that bins are regularly emptied, and bathrooms are kept clean and hygienic. To improve overall air quality, you could also consider using a commercial air purifier to further destroy potential microbes, bacteria & viruses.

And lastly, to clean high touch point areas such as countertops, shelves, and door handles, use a good qualitymicrofibre clothsuch as the i-fibre and a disinfectant spray to wipe over surfaces and remove any grubby marks or traces or dirt.

For more information on our complete 4D cleaning product line-up click here.

Challenge 3: Attracting & retaining staff

Keeping your staff safe and happy provides stability to any type of business.Staff consider safe and hygienic working conditions as leading factor (on top of wage) in determining their work satisfaction. So how can we attract good candidates and retain our staff?

The Solution:

While it can be difficult to solve all our employee challenges, it ispossible to equip our team with cleaning tools and products that are safe and fun to use.By providing your staff with commercial cleaning equipment that is user friendly and enjoyable to use, you can reduce the time your staff spend cleaning.

The i-mop floor scrubber, for example, is designed to help the operator rediscover the joy of cleaning with a fast and ergonomic cleaning experience that is a pleasure to use. Using a robotic vacuum prevents your team being bogged down by mundane vacuuming tasks, and an all in one cleaners workstation provides them with all the tools they need in one package, optimising the cleaning experience.

Challenge 4: Managing after-hours security

A substantial portionof supermarket chains and retailers use external contractors that come and clean the store typically once staff have closed-up and gone home. As a result, there is aneed to furthermanage security due to the added risk of potential theft and other logistical concerns of a third-party cleaner. While the organisation itself may have a trustworthy reputation, it’s very possible that certain individuals within that contract cleaning team may tamper with merchandise from shelves or back-of-house, while some cleaners might not show up on time, or not at all.

The Solution:

By purchasing your own products that can be manged and used by your own staff you can mitigate any risks and costs of using a third party. While it is an initialinvestment to purchase your own equipment, you can save thousands of dollars when you calculate the cost over time for employing additional staff, resources, and security. 

Ourproducts have been designed to give proprietors and managers the ability to keep their cleaning activities in-house, and even during normal working hours to reduce risks stemming from contract cleaners.

As an example, our case study with the manager of the Tong Li Supermarket said the i-mop gave them the ability to keep their cleaning in-house; you can read the full case study here.

Challenge 5: Lack of time & budget for effective cleaning

End of day cleaning procedures are extremely important to reset and refresh the store for the next day. While this often involves an extensive cleaning routine including mopping, wiping down surfaces etc it doesn’t have to take hours. 

The Solution: 

Tohelp you create more time and money i-team haveprovided innovative and sustainable products for the cleaning industry. By using products that reduce overall cleaning times you’ll also be able to save money in the process. Once you factor in wage costs, reducing your cleaning times will save a considerable amount of money over time, meaning the investment you make in an i-team product will pay dividends over time. 

Read: the i-mop is so good Murray wants to keep it a secret from his competitors.

Don’t believe us? Check out ouri-mop savings calculator to find out how much money you can save with our range of revolutionary floor scrubber that leaves floors dry as you clean.

To find out more about our products or about our approach to 4 dimensional cleaning click here.