Hygiene Compliance: How Does Your Dishwasher Stack Up?

With good hygiene and sanitisation practices top of mind, whether you design workplaces, build or operate them, a duty of care is owed to provide employees, clients and customers alike with a hygienic environment to coexist within.

For high traffic areas like workplace kitchens, the potential risk for germ transmission between team members and beyond is high. When it comes to the cleaning of communal cutlery and crockery, the strongest weapon of defence is a professional grade dishwasher.

So what is a professional grade dishwasher and why should workplaces other than cafes and restaurants consider it? A professional dishwasher has been purpose built with heavy duty components, to deliver users with special wash programmes at temperatures in excess of 80­­­°C in turnaround times as quick 90 seconds. What’s key to note here is the 80°C. This is the minimum recommended temperature in conjunction with using detergent to achieve sanitisation. A temperature stipulation recently outlined in the COVID-19 safe guidelines provided by the Restaurant & Catering Association for the hospitality industry.

For context, a domestic grade dishwasher washes at an average of 50­°C on a standard wash and may need as long as 120 minutes per cycle to complete. While most offer a hot wash function, this will only take you to the neighbourhood of between 60­°C to 70°C, the higher end if you happen to have the Bosch Series 8 with HygienePlus™ for example. What needs to be made clear is that domestic machines are intended for home application, and professional dishwashers are suited to the workplace (but some do offer flexibility to be used in home application as well, like Miele’s Professional for Home Series).

There is however more to a professional dishwashers than just special wash programmes and sanitisation. Added benefits extend to increased capacity to handle a higher number of wash cycles per day (average between 5-7 washes, compared with a domestic’s average of once daily) with speed and accuracy (between 7-25 minutes, versus potential 120 minutes on a domestic machine).

Available on selected professional dishwashers are added tech features such as load sensing capabilities, for greater water and electricity usage efficiencies, and WiFi enabled controls. These additions make professional units ideal for large scale fleet management as they can provide facilities managers with instant visibility and quick diagnoses of issues. Best of all, with a professional machine you can expect to receive a 2 year commercial use warranty. Often no warranty coverage exists for a domestic machine, when used in a non-residential application. An expensive lesson to avoid, if you can.

With a strong product offering in the professional space by Miele, Smeg, Winterhalter, Classeq and Asko, how do you decide on a best fit machine?

We suggest you start by assessing how many people the machine will be expected to service. From there, work to build an understanding of what true usage would look like, and ascertain if any other external factors exist that may impact on the unit’s ‘business usual’. For instance, does the business operate throughout a 12 or 24 hour period with shift workers? Does the business hold regular functions resulting in additional crockery and cutlery for cleaning on top of standard use? Each scenario will impact on the expected work rate of the machine. A word to the wise, should you choose to elevate the machine’s daily work rate above its’ design intention, effectively you’re churning through the unit’s expected lifespan - perhaps sooner than you might have budgeted for.

With this in mind, it is vital you take the time to consider all the potential external factors beyond just unit price alone. This will ensure you’re choosing the right dishwasher for the job. It’s important to get it right, because hygiene and health depend on it.

So, how does your dishwasher stack up? For more information on Harvey Norman Commercial Victoria’s range of professional dishwashers, click the learn more button below.

The team at Harvey Norman Commercial Victoria are pleased to share with you our insights and expertise. With a full range of professional dishwashers on display in our new state-of-the-art large format Selection Centre in Port Melbourne, we offer our clients the opportunity to see, touch and compare products in one place.

To make an appointment to visit our trade-only Selection Centre in Port Melbourne, contact our office on 03 8530 6300 or alternatively email our team via vic.commercial@au.harveynorman.com

Our knowledgeable and dedicated sales specialists are ready to assist. The team at Harvey Norman Commercial Victoria look forward to assisting you with your next project.