Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the governments across the world issued total lockdown in their countries, which included shutting down of restaurants for dine-in. Now, when the governments have started relaxing the norms and unlocking various places for public use, this includes opening the restaurants for dining-in. With winter approaching, restaurants in cold-weather areas are growing increasingly concerned about safeguarding themselves and operating in a virus-free environment. In response, some of them are turning to technology to make dining rooms safer when winter hits. Restaurants have a great responsibility to maintain clean and sterile conditions, which is why, many of them are realizing the benefits of UV light for sterilisation of their establishments. Some of the benefits of using UV light in restaurants are -

• Sanitise food contact surfaces:

  Most important factor in hygiene of a restaurant is that it is essential to keep all surfaces that may come into direct contact with food sanitized. Cleaning the contact surfaces manually can be hard and inconsistent. By using UV light, restaurants can help in keeping the contact surfaces clean. There are different cleaning agents available in the market that may be required for cleaning and can lead to confusion. Using UV-C germicidal lighting can ensure that all surfaces are efficiently cleaned.

• Disinfect equipment:

  Equipment surfaces, such as ordering screens, food-handling equipment and POS devices, can also lead to potential health outbreaks. Portable UV-C germicidal lighting can ensure the equipment are disinfected quickly and with maximum accuracy. For example, POS devices can be places under portable UV-C lighting for a specific amount of time to eliminate bacteria without harming the device itself. UV lighting can also be installed into ordering kiosks and used when the kiosks are not in use to ensure immediate cleaning of the ordering screen.

• Disinfection of items of daily use by your staff:

  The restaurant staff bring in a variety of daily objects with them such a house keys, car/bike keys, mobile phones, eyeglasses, etc. These items of daily use need to be sanitised as well, even if they are kept in a locker or somewhere else. Exposing these items to UV light for the appropriate time can help kill the microorganisms residing on it.

• Automatic kitchen and bathroom disinfection:

  Restaurant bathrooms are extremely hard to keep clean. UV-C lighting installed in a bathroom can be connected directly to sensors that detect whether the space is occupied or not. Once the bathroom is unoccupied for a certain amount of time, the UV fixture will turn on and sanitize the entire area. It can also be used after the closing of the restaurant for full sanitation over an extended period of time.

• Reduce the use of chemicals:

  Chemicals, whether toxic or non-toxic, are still potential hazards, especially in a food establishment. In addition, microorganisms can also develop immunities to them as well. One big advantage of UV-C lighting is that is chemical-free. UV lighting has been proven to kill up to 99% of all microorganisms. Unlike manual cleaning methods, which may just smear chemical-resistant bacteria around, UV light can reduce, if not eliminate, all microorganisms that are exposed to it.

With Minionlabs UV Saaph an oven shaped box, restaurants can sanitize everything instantly in four steps in less than five minutes. The model is designed in such a way that the light energy from UV-C lamps are exposed to the object inside the box at 360 degrees, making sure that not even a millimetre is left for these pathogens to live.