Few floors get more traffic and abuse than a commercial kitchen! Commercial kitchen flooring must withstand heavy traffic, intense temperatures, lots of spills, and occasionally heavy objects being dropped on it. That’s why using urethane cement in restaurant kitchen flooring is a no-brainer.
Easy to Clean
One of the main reasons restaurants use urethane cement in commercial kitchen flooring is its ease of cleaning. If you’ve never been in a commercial kitchen, you may not know that they typically have drains on the floor, so you can easily hose them down without flooding.
What you probably do know is that restaurant kitchens can get messy! Even if your only experience with restaurant kitchens is TV shows that center around them, like Hell’s Kitchen and The Bear, or getting food from them, you can surely imagine that in an environment where cooks are feeding dozens (or more) people an hour, they have to make food fast, and spills are inevitable.
It’s essential that commercial kitchen flooring is non-absorbent and easy to wipe, clean, and disinfect quickly.
Slip Resistant
Another problem that workers can quickly run into in a commercial kitchen with grease and spills is the probability of falling. To improve safety and decrease liability, many restaurants install slip-resistant restaurant kitchen flooring and require kitchen staff to wear special footwear.
We can’t help with the shoes, but it’s a simple addition to make your commercial kitchen flooring slip-resistant. We add texturing agents and then coat them in urethane cement so workers are less likely to get injured.
Of course, there is a fine line between too much texture and not enough. With too little texture, you risk injury from a fall. But add too much, and you lose some of the advantages of urethane cement’s easy-to-clean finish. It takes experienced, professional flooring installers to do the job right.
Tough
Finally, commercial kitchen flooring commonly utilizes urethane cement because of its toughness and durability. Some restaurant servers can walk ten miles during a shift! That’s a lot of punishment on the kitchen floor, and that’s before you add in the cooks (admittedly fewer) footsteps, the heat, and the near-constant cleaning.
Kitchen flooring must withstand chemicals, above-average use, and frequent temperature changes that an average floor doesn’t suffer. It’s no wonder restaurants employ urethane cement for protection!
Efficiency Means Cost Savings for Your Commercial Kitchen Flooring
While urethane cement can be a higher upfront investment for your commercial kitchen flooring, its durability, ease of cleaning, and slip resistance mean that it can save restaurants money in the long run through efficiency, a longer lifespan, and fewer injuries and lawsuits.
In most applications, urethane cement flooring lasts 10 to 20 years, but in high-traffic commercial kitchens, they may not last quite as long. But like everything else, commercial kitchen flooring lasts longer when you take good care of it.
That means promptly cleaning up spills (especially when they’re very hot), cleaning only with recommended chemicals and solutions, repairing chips soon after damage, and following the manufacturer’s instructions. Blue Ridge Coatings and Supply will help ensure your flooring lasts as long as possible by giving you all the instructions you need to care for it!