You are a store manager or maybe the person responsible for all retail areas.
You have a strict duty to prevent visual disorders. You keep a sharp eye on everything, from floors and surfaces to shelves and stock.
You need to make sure that everything is well-ordered and clean in line with UK retail industry standards.
While overseeing retail cleaning, you come across a lot of operational cleanliness challenges.
Some of these challenges are outlined below, including ones you are already familiar with.
As you are in a critical position but unsure how to deal with them, our professional retail cleaning services can help you.
This blog will explain the challenges that retail supervisors like you face and how to solve them.
Why Retail Hygiene Fails (and What’s at Stake)
First, let’s go through the reasons why some retail store owners fail to comply with retail hygiene and safety standards. Here are the reasons:
- Many retail stores operate 12 hours a day, including weekends. People are always arriving during working hours, roaming and leaving the store. For each entry, new dirt is introduced.
- Unlike a normal workplace, retail stores are filled with shelves, large areas, lifts, and chilled aisles. Most staff are busy looking after the shelves, missing the chilled aisle, which, if not cleaned in time, can cause slippery patches.
- Customers enter with trolleys and baskets; new customers pick up the same baskets; germs transfer easily to one another if not cleaned before the previous customers leave.
- During peak hours, such as Christmas, staff get too busy to look after the shelves as people often mess up the shelves during product pick-up and put them back in the wrong place.
- Sometimes the supply chain gets stuck when stock is delayed; cleaning is delayed, creating a backlog.
- When purchases increase, queues grow, failing to clean the self-checkouts and card machines on time.
Overall, none of this happens on its own. Some issues get resolved while others remain. This altogether breaks the cleaning routine. Retail management generally plans the cleaning process and documents it, but fails to implement it due to these causes, which can be unpredictable. The gap between plan and practice is where hygiene fails.
What’s at Stake
- Safety: Wet patches and debris cause slips and claims.
- Compliance: Food and health rules expect proof, not promises. Missing logs and poor products risk notices.
- Reputation: Dirty loos, sticky floors, or smudged doors lower trust and basket size.
- Cost: Emergencies cost more than prevention. Downtime and rework eat margins.
- Morale: Staff do better in clean spaces; messy stores drain energy.
What Makes Supermarkets & Shops Hard to Keep Clean?
As a retail manager, no matter how dutiful you are, tasks might be missed as you are managing a bundle of duties at a time, especially regarding cleaning routines. You are not missing these tasks on purpose—pressure can throw the task off the table sometimes.
For instance, a staff member might need to clean the pastry case, but the staff member was so busy handling customers’ orders and looking after them.
But if you have solid planning at hand, along with the right hires or a professional cleaning team, you can manage it well.
Let’s discuss some common tasks that make it hard for department stores and supermarket staff to keep clean.
Sweeping under or behind the displays and furniture
Back-end areas behind display cases or shelving units are hard to reach. These areas collect a lot of dirt. Staff in general ignore them and take them for granted, as they are not visible to the customers.
Cleaning Shopping Carts
First, it seems simple to clean the shopping carts if you have a small supermarket, but for a large store, there can be hundreds of shopping carts, which can take many hours to clean.
Refrigerator Shelving
Over time, rubber gaskets (maintaining the inflow and outflow of air) inside the refrigerators can crack and might dry out. This leads to warm-air leaks.
Staff often overlook cleaning these gaskets, which should be wiped down daily. As a result, the gaskets become mouldy and they are much harder to clean if they are left for a long time.
Floor Mats
In retail stores, floor mats are used for visitors’ convenience to prevent slips. They trap a lot of water and dirt to protect the floor from wear and tear.
Cleaning these floor mats involves more than using water and rubbing with agents or soap.
Its cleanliness needs careful attention and in some areas, a specific permit is needed and a particular type of drainage process.
Trash Cans
This seems odd to say, but yes, dustbins must be cleaned right away when they’re filled with waste. Customers don’t want to see overflowing rubbish bins. We recommend cleaning the dustbins promptly and replacing them with new ones when they are not in good condition. It is not that challenging a task until you overlook it every day.
Restrooms
Having limited in-house staff might be a reason you are overlooking restroom cleaning. When you have a dirty restroom, there is a higher chance of losing customers and sending them back to rival stores that have ultra-clean facilities.
Food safety & compliance for Retail Stores
Now, let’s discuss some of the important food safety and compliance for retail stores.
- BRCGS standards: Not directly for retail stores, but applied to vendors and suppliers to show retailers the products they are delivering are of the highest standards.
- SFBB: It is a guideline for small retail stores covering everything regarding cleanliness, from cross-contamination to pest control, and much more.
- HACCP: It identifies, evaluates and controls food safety hazards such as contamination. It establishes critical control points (CCPs), setting limits, monitoring cleaning processes, and taking appropriate actions.
- COSHH: Control of Substances Hazardous to Health requires staff to be trained in the proper use of cleaning tools and equipment and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE).
- RAMS & Inductions: RAMS are documents that assess risks, provide safe systems of work for retail tasks, while employee induction is the process of introducing new staff to the company, their role and necessary health and safety information for retail stores.
- FHRS: A local authority food safety officer inspects retail premises and gives ratings from 0 to 5 as per the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS). The rating is displayed on a sticker and online.
- BS EN 13549: A European standard for cleaning services assesses cleaning quality and performance and supports regular audits and improvement.
How Professional Retail Cleaning Services Can Create the Environment Your Store Deserves
The retail industry is competitive. First impressions matter. A well-cleaned store will deliver that. But to make it happen, professional retail cleaning is a smart decision. Why? Let’s find the reasons:
Well-trained Staff
A credible retail store cleaning service invests in staff with the belief that quality staff leads to a flourishing business. The team is BICSc certified, follows ISO standard processes and strict cleaning protocols and applies the most suitable cleaning methods. Well-trained staff. Ultra-clean store. Boosted sales.
Quality Management
Cleaning without quality is like knowledge without implementation. An honest retail cleaning company puts quality above all. The team creates predefined standards, detailed checklists, performs initial site assessments, follows all SOPs and does regular checks post-cleaning for improvement. Your clean store. Our top priority.
Meeting UK Standards
In the UK, any business, whether it be an office, commercial property, residential units, industrial units, or a retail department, strict standards regarding safety and hygiene need to be followed. A commercial retail cleaner is aware of all cleaning standards applied in retail or other specific industries and performs the job in line with UK standards.
Adaptable Options
Retail cleaning services offer flexible options, which means you can schedule your cleaning out of office hours, before, during and after an event, while in-house is available round the clock. Professional retail cleaners also offer customised options, whether it be a deep cleaning, regular cleaning, or any other special cleaning.
FAQs
How often should a supermarket or convenience store be cleaned?
Nightly routine cleaning, deep cleaning monthly or quarterly. High-risk food zones are weekly. Adjust by footfall, seasons and audit results.
What’s the difference between daytime porters and out-of-hours teams?
Daytime porters handle spills, restrooms, trolleys, and touchpoints. Out-of-hours teams do machine floor cleaning, perform deep cleans, and reset the store.
Which disinfectants should we use on trolleys, baskets, and tills?
Wipe with food-safe disinfectants carrying EN 1276 (bacteria) and EN 14476 (viruses). Use compatible wipes for card pads and avoid corrosive or perfumed products.
How does professional cleaning support our FHRS or landlord audits?
By providing documented schedules, cleaning logs, RAMS, chemical lists, training records, QA inspections, and photo evidence.
What accreditations should we ask a cleaning company to hold?
Look for BICSc-trained staff and clear COSHH documentation with RAMS.
How quickly can Innovative Cleaning Services mobilise a new site?
We can survey within 24–48 hours, then mobilise in 5–10 working days, depending on size and TUPE. Emergency cover and day-one porters available sooner.
Conclusion
Retail store supervisors or managers face a lot of pressure when it comes to managing a tsunami of customers arriving every second, making cleaning challenging.
In-house staff are busy restocking shelves, performing regular cleaning, which still makes it hard when customer flow is active and the moment they clean, a new customer arrives, making the cleaning a loop.
