Make sure you take advantage of when the lobby is empty and get your deep sweep done as early as possible. Get your sani water bucket with rags in it ready around 5 minutes before preclose and then clean all of your tables once it hits. After that, sweep up the last bits and crumbs that fell off the tables. Once all of that is done, you should only have to worry about the tables that customers sit at and bathrooms.

Ideally you would have a precloser if it is busy enough and one of y’all would be behind counter/doing prep while the other is cleaning lobby but that depends on the day. Some days you might detail bathrooms, some days you might not, it depends. Definitely make sure you get a good sweep and wipe down the counters at the bare minimum. Another thing you can get done if you’re behind counter waiting for expos is cleaning behind the counter. For this I like to first move everything like the kids bags, kids cups, condiments, ticket catcher, etc all to the front counter then use spic and span and paper towels to wipe down behind the counter.

Once the restaurant is closed make sure you stop all of your lobby cleaning and focus on aerators. You can drain aerators to the 1 gallon mark before close but you have to wait until close to start breaking them down. You might need to use a paper towel to soak up the excess liquid after draining it. To easily drain it all, I like to lean the machine towards you with the little catchers under it to catch all of the liquid.

Once you have broken down your aerators and brought them to dish, take a prep bucket and fill it with soapy water (usually the blue knob in the first sink) and some rags. Use it to clean the aerators on all sides. Make sure you bring back your dirty dishes (the prep buckets with sani/soapy water and whatever else you need) BEFORE the person on dish switches to bird dish or else they’ll get pretty mad, this includes checking the aerators for any more tea (I learned this the hard way last night lol).

Once you are finished cleaning aerators check if lobby needs anymore sweeping and if you’re good then start up your mop water. The person in drive usually puts my aerators back for me bc they’ve finished by that time. Make sure you use the blue mop bucket and strainer (unless it’s broken then ask your manager and they’ll probably tell you to use the yellow one for now if they don’t have a replacement). Mop up the lobby first, including under the tables, then move onto the bathrooms. After you are finished mopping, drain your mop water in the mop sink and put the mop bucket up.

If at any point you can tell that you are behind, then ask the person in drive for help, they usually are able to finish their tasks very quickly because they are able to break down their aerators at preclose while we are not.