Everything about Keeping Retail Store Sanitized During COVID-19

If you own or manage a retail store, what should you be doing to keep your employees and customers safe as the COVID-19 pandemic continues? It can be challenging to decide on a course of action, especially when there’s so much at stake and so little in the way of clear direction from authorities.

We’re here today to discuss everything you should know about keeping a retail store sanitized during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to clear up some of the confusion surrounding cleaning terminology.

What Is Sanitization?

The first thing to understand is that sanitization is different from cleaning and disinfecting if you’re technical about it.

When you dust, vacuum or wipe up a stain, you’re cleaning. Cleaning is about removing visible dirt and grime. Because customers can see the results of the cleaning you do, it’s often the metric by which they judge the quality of your store.

When you disinfect something, you’re using a product that kills germs. A disinfectant doesn’t necessarily clean. Think about UV-C light technology. It kills some germs, but it doesn’t remove visible debris.

Sanitizing, which is our current focus, involves removing germs. It’s an effective way of preventing the spread of germs because their numbers are too low afterward to cause any problems. Cleaning and disinfecting are both ways of sanitizing a surface or item.

When Is Sanitization Appropriate?

You have to clean regularly to keep your store looking its best. Adding a more comprehensive sanitization routine on top of existing cleaning procedures can help keep your work environment healthy.

It’s important to remember that sanitization is more effective in some circumstances than others. Ensuring employees wash their hands with soap and water frequently, for example, is critical.

You should also sanitize commonly touched surfaces in the store, including door handles, counters and point of sale systems.

In general, that will be enough to reduce the population of various viruses, fungi and bacteria in your store.

You should break out the disinfectants when an employee tests positive for COVID-19 or if your store frequently serves customers with weakened immune systems. In those cases, you know a potentially dangerous virus is already present or that a reduced population of a virus may not be enough to protect visitors.

It’s possible to disinfect too much. Products that claim to kill 99.9 percent of germs still leave 0.1 percent of them alive to reproduce and spread. Over time, the viruses and bacteria in question become more and more resistant to disinfectants. Eventually, the disinfectants are no longer effective.

Using the Right Supplies

If you’re going to sanitize a space, you need the right tools for the job. Unfortunately, finding the products you need can be a little complicated.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the organization responsible for sanitizers and disinfectants used on people, like hand sanitizer and soap. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the organization that tests and regulates products used to sanitize or disinfect surfaces.

Right now, there aren’t any products that operate solely as sanitizers that are effective against the COVID-19 virus. You will need to use a disinfectant or a product that both sanitizes and disinfects to remove the virus.

Check the EPA’s List N for products that they have approved for use against the COVID-19 virus.

A note: you should only ever mix bleach with water, and that’s if you need to dilute it. Don’t mix it with anything else, particularly not ammonia-based cleaning products. The resulting gases that are released can be hazardous.

High Touch Surfaces

Whether you’re cleaning, sanitizing or disinfecting, which surfaces should you focus on? We recommend paying particular attention to high touch surfaces like:

• Doors and entryways.
• Carts and baskets.
• Changing rooms if applicable.
• Bathrooms
• Push-to-open buttons.
• Railings
• Anything someone might lean on.
• Checkout areas.
• The employee break room.

Always clean a surface with hot, soapy water before sanitizing or disinfecting it. Use products that the EPA has approved and proper personal protective equipment. Wash your hands thoroughly after using cleaning products or touching potentially contaminated surfaces.

That’s a pretty extensive list, especially when you consider that your employees need the time to do their jobs in addition to maintaining an environment that meets current public health standards. You need to show your employees why these additional duties are essential.

Emphasizing Why It Matters

It has been more than a year since the COVID-19 virus emerged in the United States. Between the fear, uncertainty, and constantly changing public health guidelines, most people are exhausted.

As tempting as it is to start letting things slide, it’s essential to the continued health and well-being of your customers and employees that you don’t.

Emphasize the importance of their duties to the staff members responsible for cleaning. By continuing to sanitize the store, they’re:

• Protecting children under the age of 12 who aren’t yet eligible for a vaccine.
• Keeping people who can’t get vaccinated for whatever reason safe.
• Preventing the spread of the virus, meaning mutations are less likely to occur.
• Stopping the reach of other viruses like colds and seasonal flu cases that, while less dangerous, are still unpleasant and inconvenient.

Rules, regulations and cleaning checklists exist for a reason, even when it’s challenging to recognize why when you’re in the middle of dealing with much larger, more pressing issues.

At Allied Facility Care, we have nearly 30 years of cleaning experience across industries like healthcare, education, offices, restaurants and retail shops. We’ve been dedicated to keeping our clients and their customers safe and healthy since long before the pandemic began, and the current public health crisis has only affirmed our passion for our job.

Our goal is to alleviate some of the burdens the COVID-19 pandemic has placed on business owners across industries. With offices in Dallas and Keller, we support businesses across the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

If your business could benefit from a professional, dedicated cleaning service, reach out to us today for a free quote. We can’t wait to hear from you!