The Restaurant Cleaning Supply Checklist for South Florida Kitchens: What Each Station Needs, and the Monthly Case Math for 120 Seats

The short answer: a restaurant runs five separate supply sets — food-contact sanitizer, kitchen degreaser and floor care, warewashing chemistry, restroom consumables, and front-of-house wipe-down — and the two that get inspectors’ attention are the food-contact sanitizer you can prove is at strength and the hand-sink consumables that must never be empty. Below is the list by station, the routine that goes with each, and the monthly case math for a 120-seat South Florida restaurant, with every consumption figure labelled as an assumption you replace with your own count. The reasons behind the hand-sink rules, including the 85°F water temperature most guides still get wrong, are on our restaurant supply page; this post is the shopping list and the arithmetic.

Kitchen line and prep

• Food-contact sanitizer (quat or chlorine) mixed to the label concentration in red buckets at every station, changed on a schedule and whenever visibly soiled.
• Test strips matched to the sanitizer. The FDA Food Code (section 4-302.14) requires a test kit or other device that accurately measures sanitizer concentration, used per the manufacturer’s instructions. Quat strips do not read chlorine and vice versa; stock the right one and keep it dry.
• Heavy-duty degreaser for hoods, flat-tops, fryer surrounds and walls behind the line, plus a neutral floor cleaner for daily mopping and an enzymatic or alkaline floor degreaser for the weekly deep clean. Our floor chemical comparison gives buckets per gallon from published dilution ratios.
• Bar mops and colour-coded microfibre, with kitchen cloths in a colour that never appears in a restroom caddy. Microfibre outlasts cotton by a wide margin in commercial laundering; see the mop head comparison for the laundering figures.
• Food-safe disposable gloves in the sizes the line actually wears. Nitrile for anything with oils or heat; the glove comparison covers cost per task.
• Can liners sized to the kitchen cans, heavy enough for wet waste, with a star seal. Undersized or thin liners are where kitchens double-bag and quietly double the cost.

Dish and warewashing

• Machine detergent, rinse aid and machine sanitizer (for low-temperature machines) on the chemical feed, or a three-compartment sink set: detergent, clear rinse, and the same food-contact sanitizer as the line.
• Delimer on a schedule — South Florida water leaves scale that blocks jets and shortens element life.
• Pot-and-pan detergent, scrub pads and scrapers, plus dedicated dish-pit gloves with a longer cuff.
• Floor squeegee and a drain-line treatment; the dish pit floor is the wettest in the building and the one that generates slip claims.

Restrooms

• Hand soap in a sealed cartridge, paper towel or dryer, and toilet tissue — all three are required at hand sinks and toilet rooms, and an empty dispenser is a recorded finding regardless of how clean the room is.
• EPA-registered disinfectant for fixtures and touchpoints, applied for the label contact time; bowl cleaner (acid for scale, non-acid for daily) per the bowl cleaner post.
• Covered sanitary-napkin receptacle with liners in any restroom used by women — required, cheap, and one of the most common avoidable findings.
• Urinal screens, air care, a restroom-only mop and cloth colour, and a stocking log on the back of the door.

Front of house and bar

• Food-contact sanitizer in spray bottles or wipes for tables, high chairs and menus; a separate glass cleaner for windows and display cases.
• Bar towels, bar sink chemistry (the three-sink set again), and drain treatment for beer lines and floor drains.
• Entrance matting and a spill kit: wet-floor sign, absorbent, and a small mop set that never goes to the kitchen.
• Hand sanitizer at the host stand and POS; the gel vs foam post covers doses per refill.

The routine that decides how much you use

Sanitizer buckets are changed by the clock, so their usage is set by the number of stations and changes per shift, not by covers. Paper and soap are set by restroom visits, which for a restaurant are driven by covers, not staff. Degreaser and floor chemistry are set by square footage and the weekly deep clean. Write those three drivers down before you write a single case count; a checklist without them is a list of things to run out of.

Monthly case math for a 120-seat restaurant

Assumptions, labelled so you can replace them: 120 seats turning 2.5 times a day, 30 days, so about 9,000 covers a month; one restroom visit per cover at 15 sheets of tissue and 1.5 towels per dry; one handwash per visit at roughly 0.4 mL of foam soap; six sanitizer stations changed three times a shift, two shifts, at 2 gallons a bucket; 8 kitchen cans pulled twice a day plus 6 front and restroom cans pulled once.

• Toilet tissue: 9,000 × 15 = 135,000 sheets. Scott Professional 04460 is 550 sheets a roll, 80 rolls (44,000 sheets) a case: about 3.1 cases. A jumbo roll cuts refill trips; compare on sheets and feet.
• Hand towel: 9,000 × 1.5 = 13,500 towels. Scott Essential 01804 multifold is 4,000 a case: about 3.4 cases.
• Hand soap: 9,000 washes × 0.4 mL = 3.6 litres of foam, or about four one-litre cartridges; on liquid at 1.5 mL a shot it is 13.5 litres. Add staff handwashing on top — on a line it is many times a guest’s.
• Food-contact sanitizer: 6 stations × 3 changes × 2 shifts × 2 gallons = 72 gallons of solution a day, 2,160 a month. Divide 2,160 by the gallons of solution your concentrate’s label says one gallon makes; the ratio is the product’s, not ours, and a food-contact sanitizer dilutes far leaner than the same brand’s disinfectant. Add one tube of matching test strips per month.
• Can liners: (8 × 2 + 6) × 30 = 660 pulls; case counts depend on size and gauge, so take liners per case from the spec sheet.

Round each to whole cases, add one case of safety stock on tissue, towel and liners — the three items that cannot be substituted the night they run out — and put the whole list on a standing monthly order. Run the numbers again after one week of counting refills; covers are the only assumption above you cannot fix from a spreadsheet.

How to run the order

1. List each station and the driver behind it: covers, stations, or square feet.
2. Pick one sanitizer chemistry for the whole building and the strips that match it.
3. Separate cloth and mop colours by area and buy each colour as its own line.
4. Size liners to the can and the waste; specify star seal for the kitchen.
5. Send the list, or a photo of the dry-store shelf, for a delivered price per line across Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach, or send the current invoice and we will beat it line by line. The janitorial chemicals, paper and tissue and disposables and kitchen ranges carry everything above.

FAQ

What cleaning supplies does a restaurant need to pass inspection?

The two lines inspectors check first are a food-contact sanitizer held at label strength with a matching test kit, which the FDA Food Code (section 4-302.14) requires, and hand-sink consumables that are never empty: soap, towels or a dryer, and toilet tissue. Everything else on the checklist keeps the building clean; those two keep the report clean.

Do I need different test strips for quat and chlorine sanitizer?

Yes. Test strips read one chemistry. Quat strips do not measure chlorine and chlorine strips do not measure quat, and the Food Code requires the test kit to be used per the manufacturer's instructions. Pick one sanitizer chemistry for the whole building and stock the strips that match it.

How much toilet paper and paper towel does a 120-seat restaurant use a month?

At the labelled assumptions of 9,000 covers a month, one restroom visit per cover, 15 sheets per visit and 1.5 towels per dry, about 135,000 sheets of tissue (roughly 3.1 cases of 80 standard 550-sheet rolls) and 13,500 towels (about 3.4 cases of 4,000 multifold). Count refills for one week and replace the assumptions with your own figures.

Why should kitchen and restroom cloths be different colours?

So a cloth that has touched a toilet or urinal never touches a prep table. Colour-coding by area is the simplest control that works when staff turn over, and it costs nothing more than buying each colour as its own line and keeping the restroom caddy out of the kitchen.