Thursday, November 06, 2008

Deep Cleaning the Grill at McDonald's

The LiveJournal Community McDonald's Talk is often an interesting insight into the fast food lives of McDonald's employees around the world.

Recently I paid a visit and read about cleaning the inside of a grill at a McDonald's in Huntsville, Alabama.

McDonald's Talk contributor superfly915 took some before and after photos of his work and wrote:
"Over the last few days, I have cleaned the inside of the grill. I doubt that this has ever been done before at my store (and if it has, it's been a really long time)."
Here's a 'before and after' cleaning comparison:



It certainly looks like a big job and it looks like Superfly put his heart into it and did a great job.

I've lightened and tried to sharpen some more of the photos Superfly took (below) to show you just how bad this grill got before he got in there and scooped and scrubbed out all that grease.






Kudos to Superfly for getting this done, but maybe his manager might want to consider getting this done sooner next time, before it gets so gross.

Silly me, but I thought McDonald's did a thorough cleaning every night after closing that would keep something from getting this bad.

And here's a final look at Superfly's finished product... a clean McDonald's grill!

2 comments:

keith twombley said...

The nightly cleaning at McDonald's doesn't and cannot afford enough time to deep clean behind every grill, fryer, and other major pieces of equipment. Cleaning as shown in those photos requires shutting the grill off entirely and removing it from the smoekstack shroud, severely limiting (if not entirely preventing) food from being made during the procedure.

Stores set up cleaning rotations to handle these sorts of infrequent cleanings. Most of the McDonald's stores I've worked at had 2 grills and 2 fryers. Each would be on a rotation to be pulled from the smokestack shroud and cleaned behind on a rotating weekly schedule. Thus each one would be cleaned monthly. Missing a scheduled cleaning would mean it'd be two months, etc.

While it does look like this particular task has been skipped a while, I wouldn't guess that it's "never" been cleaned. Depending on the store's volume of sales that much buildup could be the result of only two to three months.

While I agree that it's certainly gross to see this, it's not quite the health hazard it looks like. Food never gets anywhere close to the underside back of a grill, and the entire front and cooking sufrace are routinely cleaned several times a day. Pull your stove at home away from the wall if you're curious. It won't look as bad as these pictures, but you still won't be hungry after you see it. And yet your stove was (and still is) perfectly safe to cook on. Same with the grill at McDonald's.

Anonymous said...

I clean them once a month and they are perfect. Are store opened 2 years ago and so far everything is running perfect. It takes time to make the store perfect. But at last your paycheck is nice and everyone is happy. hardest part of cleaning is the grill area but if you get help from everyone else to keep it clean it usually stays clean.. But I enjoy it. Bah bah bah im lovin it.