A cleaning schedule tells your team what to clean, how often and who did it. Without one, the counter gets wiped and the seals on the fridge door don't. This page gives you a free printable café cleaning schedule with daily opening and closing checks and a page of weekly and monthly tasks, and explains how to use it, how to clean properly and what to buy.
Download the free café cleaning schedule (PDF)
The template is two A4 landscape pages in black and white, so it prints cleanly on any office printer. Page 1 is a daily schedule for one week. Page 2 is a list of weekly and monthly tasks with space to record each time they are done.
What is on the template
Page 1: daily cleaning schedule. Lines at the top for your business name and the week commencing date, then a grid with a tick box for each task on each day, Monday to Sunday. Tasks are grouped by when they happen:
- Opening: wipe and sanitise prep surfaces, check the hand-wash basin has soap, hot water and paper towels, check your sanitiser is in date and made up to the right dilution, and put out clean cloths.
- During service: clean as you go, wipe and sanitise tables between customers, sanitise the card machine, menus and QR stands, and empty bins when they are full.
- Coffee machine: purge and wipe the steam wands after each use, backflush the group heads at close, and soak the portafilters and baskets.
- Closing: clean and sanitise all surfaces, clean fridge handles and door seals, clean sinks, empty and clean bins, sweep and mop floors, clean the toilets, and put cloths in for washing or bin them.
Each group ends with an Initials row for each day, so you can see who did the opening clean and who did the close. The last row is for a manager to initial once they have checked the sheet.
Page 2: weekly and monthly tasks. Each row has the task, how often to do it, and four pairs of Date done and Initials boxes, so one sheet lasts a month. It covers deep cleaning fridges, defrosting freezers, descaling the kettle and water boiler, cleaning extractor filters, pulling out equipment to clean behind it, cleaning the ice machine and grinder, checking for signs of pests, washing walls and splashbacks, and more. There are 2 blank rows for tasks of your own.
At the bottom is a short key on two-stage cleaning, which we explain below.
How to use it with your team
A schedule only works if people use it. A few habits that help:
- Put it where the work happens. Pin the daily sheet near the hand-wash basin or the kitchen door, not in the office.
- Tick when it is done, not at the end of the day. A sheet filled in all at once at closing time is easy to spot, and it doesn't tell you much.
- Initial every group. Initials show who was responsible for each part of the day, which makes it easier to follow up when something is missed.
- Write down what went wrong. If a task can't be done, write X in the box and a note on the back, such as "mop broken, new one ordered". A note shows you noticed and did something.
- Have a manager check it daily. A quick look at closing, and initials in the bottom row, keeps standards up.
- Keep old sheets. Store each week's sheet with your food safety records. They show an inspector that cleaning happens every day, not just on the day they visit.
Change the tasks to fit your café. If you have no ice machine, cross it out. If you have a panini grill or a soup kettle, add it to the blank rows.
Why a cleaning schedule matters
The Food Standards Agency's Safer Food, Better Business pack, which most small cafés in England and Wales use for their food safety management system, has a section on cleaning. It covers clean as you go, two-stage cleaning and keeping a cleaning schedule. In Scotland, Food Standards Scotland's CookSafe does the same job.
Cleanliness is also part of what an inspector looks at when they decide your food hygiene rating, under the condition of your premises. Grease behind equipment and dirty fridge door seals are common reasons cafés lose marks. Our guide to getting a 5 star food hygiene rating covers the rest of what they score.
Two-stage cleaning
Many people spray sanitiser on a dirty surface and wipe it straight off. That doesn't work well. Disinfectants can't reach bacteria under a layer of grease or food, and most need time on the surface to work.
Two-stage cleaning fixes this:
- Clean. Remove visible dirt, food and grease with hot water and detergent, then rinse if the product says to.
- Disinfect. Apply a disinfectant or sanitiser, leave it for the contact time on the label, then wipe or rinse as the label says.
Use two-stage cleaning for anything food touches and anything hands touch often: prep surfaces, chopping boards, fridge handles, tap handles, the card machine and door handles. A sanitiser that cleans and disinfects in one product still needs two applications: one to clean, one to disinfect.
Choosing a sanitiser
Not every spray from the cash and carry does the job. Food Standards Agency guidance says disinfectants and sanitisers used in food businesses should meet BS EN 1276 or BS EN 13697. Look for one of these numbers on the label or the product data sheet.
When you choose and use one:
- Check the contact time. This is how long the surface must stay wet for the product to work. It can be 30 seconds or several minutes. Pick one that suits a busy café and make sure staff know it.
- Dilute it properly. If you make it up from a concentrate, use the dilution on the label. Too weak and it won't work. Label the spray bottle with the product name and the date you made it up.
- Keep it in date. Both the concentrate and made-up bottles can go out of date. The template has an opening check for this.
- Use food-safe products on food surfaces. Some products need rinsing off before food goes back on the surface. The label will say.
- Keep the data sheets. Your supplier can give you the safety data sheet for each chemical. Keep them with your COSHH records.
Cloths
Dirty cloths spread bacteria from one surface to the next. The safest options are:
- Single-use cloths for raw food areas and for cleaning up after raw meat or eggs. Use once and bin.
- Reusable cloths washed on a hot cycle. The template uses 60°C as a guide; check your washing machine and the cloth label. Don't rinse a cloth in the sink and use it again for food surfaces.
- Colour-coded cloths so the cloth for the toilets never ends up on the counter. A common scheme is one colour for raw food areas, one for ready-to-eat areas, one for front of house and one for toilets. Pick one and put a chart on the wall.
Put out fresh cloths at opening, and at closing put used ones in for washing or in the bin. Both are on the daily sheet.
Coffee machine cleaning
Milk and coffee oils build up fast, and a dirty machine affects the taste of every drink as well as hygiene. Always follow the manufacturer's instructions for your machine and grinder, and use the cleaning products they recommend. In general:
- After every drink with milk: purge the steam wand and wipe it with a clean, damp cloth kept just for the wand. Dried milk on a wand is hard to shift and harbours bacteria.
- During service: rinse the portafilter and flush the group head between drinks.
- At close: backflush the group heads with the machine cleaner, soak the portafilters and baskets, clean the drip tray and wipe the outside of the machine.
- Weekly: clean the grinder burrs and hopper to remove old coffee oils. Many grinders need to be unplugged and partly taken apart, so check the manual first.
- As the manufacturer says: descale the boiler, or have it serviced. How often depends on your water and whether you use a filter.
The coffee machine has its own section on the daily sheet, and the grinder and descaling are on the weekly page.
How it works in Café QR
When paper sheets get lost or filled in late, Café QR's food safety module keeps the same checks on a tablet or phone.
- Opening and closing checklists, ready-made in the style of Safer Food, Better Business, that staff tick off one check at a time. Each check records the time and who did it, and staff can add a note or a photo.
- Your own checklists. Write custom checklist templates for your café, set how often each one runs (opening, closing, daily or weekly) and mark tasks as mandatory. A weekly deep clean or a monthly extractor clean can sit alongside your opening checks.
- Overdue checks show up. If the opening checks aren't done, they show on the Today screen so a manager can see them during the morning rush.
- A daily diary with manager sign-off, which pulls in the day's checks and temperature readings.
- Inspection mode, a read-only report of the last 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or 12 months that you can show an inspector or print with Print / Save as PDF.
Food safety is included in the POS plan at £39 per venue a month, or £6 a month as an add-on to other plans. See digital opening and closing checklists, food safety and compliance and Inspection mode, or read our guide to digital food safety records for cafés.
Frequently asked questions
Is the cleaning schedule template really free?
Yes. Download the PDF, print as many copies as you like and change it to suit your café. You do not need to sign up for anything.
Do cafés have to keep a cleaning schedule?
Your food safety management system should show how you keep your premises and equipment clean, and the Food Standards Agency's Safer Food, Better Business pack includes a cleaning schedule. A written schedule with records is the easiest way to show an inspector that cleaning is done every day.
What is two-stage cleaning?
Cleaning first with detergent and hot water to remove dirt and grease, then disinfecting with a product that meets BS EN 1276 or BS EN 13697, left on for the contact time on the label.
How often should I deep clean my café?
Daily cleaning covers surfaces, floors, sinks, toilets and the coffee machine. Most cafés deep clean fridges, extractor filters and behind equipment weekly, and higher-level areas such as lights and vents monthly. Adjust to how busy you are and what your equipment manuals say.
How long should I keep cleaning records?
There is no single rule for cafés. Keep completed sheets with your other food safety records for several months, so you can show an inspector a pattern rather than a single week. If you are unsure, ask your local council's food safety team.