How to get commercial cleaning contracts with restaurants and bars

Office buildings tend to change cleaning companies through bids run by a property manager. Restaurants mostly hire a cleaner at three moments: when they’re about to open, when the current cleaner lets them down, and when the place changes hands. The first of those is the easiest to win, and it starts with a job every new restaurant needs a few days before opening: the post-construction clean.

This guide is for janitorial companies, deep-cleaning crews, post-construction cleaners and floor care specialists who want restaurants and bars as steady accounts.

Why the post-construction clean is the way in

Every restaurant build-out ends in a mess: drywall dust in the ceiling grid and on top of every hood, paint overspray on the windows, sticker residue on new equipment, grout haze on the tile, and debris in the corners of the walk-in. The space has to be clean before the final inspections, before equipment goes into use and before staff training starts.

There are usually two buyers. The general contractor pays for rough cleans between trades, and sometimes a final clean if it’s in their contract with the owner. The owner pays for the final or touch-up clean after the equipment is in and before opening. Ask the GC which part is in their scope, and pitch the owner for the rest.

The job is worth more than its invoice. You’re in the building for a day or two with the owner or general manager at exactly the moment they’re thinking about who will clean the place every night. You’ll know the floors, the restrooms and the layout better than anyone bidding against you. If the clean is excellent and on time, the recurring contract is yours to lose.

Restaurants that change hands work the same way. A new owner taking over an existing restaurant usually wants a top-to-bottom deep clean before reopening, and is free to choose a new nightly cleaner. The site currently tracks 9,273 restaurant addresses changing hands to new owners, and each one is a possible deep-clean job.

What restaurants need that offices don’t

If you clean offices, the front of a restaurant will feel familiar: floors, restrooms, glass, trash. The kitchen and the hours are a different trade.

Grease is the big difference. A film builds up on floors, walls, door handles and the undersides of everything in a kitchen, and shoes track it into the dining room. You need hot water, the right degreaser, deck brushes for grout and more time per square foot than an office of the same size. Quarry tile that looks clean while it’s wet can dry dull and slick if the grease wasn’t cut.

Health inspections change how you work. Inspectors look under and behind equipment, at floor drains, at walls near the cooking line and at restrooms, and a dirty floor under the fryer reflects on the restaurant and on you. Agree in writing on who cleans what. In most restaurants the kitchen staff clean food-contact surfaces and cooking equipment at the end of each shift, and the contract cleaner handles floors, walls, restrooms, the dining room and the bar. Keep every bottle labeled, never leave chemicals on prep tables, and store your supplies away from food.

Front of house has its own list: tables, booths and the undersides of chairs, high chairs, the host stand, glass, the bar top and the floor behind the bar, and the patio. Back of house adds kitchen floors and drains, walls, the dish area, the walk-in floor, the staff restroom and the area around the trash and grease bins.

Know what’s outside your trade. Kitchen hood and exhaust cleaning is a separate specialty with its own fire code requirements, and most janitorial companies leave it to hood cleaners. Our guide for hood cleaners covers that work, and a referral relationship with a good hood company helps you both.

Timing by stage

Most build-outs take months, and the opening date on the banner often moves. Our data shows new places typically file about 76 days before they open, counting from the first record we see. Use the stage to decide your next move.

The best moment for first contact is during construction, a few weeks before the end. Too early and the owner can’t think past the electrician. Too late and the GC’s usual cleaner is already scheduled. By the time a place shows “Almost ready,” you want to be on the calendar.

The weeks after opening are your second chance. Many owners plan for staff to handle all the cleaning, then find out what a closing shift looks like at midnight after a busy Saturday. A friendly check-in three or four weeks after opening tends to land at the right time.

Finding the jobs

• Drive your service area. Paper on the windows, a posted permit, a coming-soon banner and a dumpster full of drywall all mark a restaurant going in.
• Call the general contractor named on the site sign. GCs who specialize in restaurants often build several a year, and a reliable final cleaner is worth a lot to them. One good GC can send you a steady run of jobs.
• Talk to landlords and leasing agents for shopping centers and mixed-use buildings. They know which spaces have restaurant tenants coming and when they expect to open.
• Follow new restaurants’ own social pages. Owners post progress photos and usually announce when they’re close.
• Watch public records. Building permits, health permit applications and liquor license filings show a restaurant coming months ahead. How to find new businesses opening near you explains what each kind of record tells you.

Walkthroughs and bidding

Never bid a restaurant from a phone call. Ask for a walkthrough with the owner or general manager and bring a checklist so you leave with everything you need:

• Square footage of the dining room, bar, kitchen, storage and restrooms
• Floor types in each area, and their condition
• Number of restrooms, toilets, urinals and sinks
• Seat count, booths and patio
• Hours, including the latest close on weekends
• What kitchen staff clean and what they expect from you
• Where your supplies will be stored, and whether there’s a mop sink
• Trash, recycling and grease bins, and who takes them out
• Keys, alarm codes and who to call if something’s wrong at 2 a.m.
• What’s coming up: inspection date, soft opening, grand opening, private events

Then write the scope by frequency. Owners compare bids line by line, and a clear scope protects you when someone says the walk-in floor was supposed to be included.

Keep the proposal to a page or two: the scope table, the visit schedule, the price, the start date, how you handle keys and access, the cancellation terms and your certificate of insurance. Landlords and GCs may want to be listed on that certificate. Check your state’s rules for what coverage and bonding you need.

Pricing approaches

Rates vary too much by market for any number here to mean much, but the methods are consistent.

• Post-construction cleans are usually priced per square foot or by estimated crew hours, often split into phases: a rough clean, a final clean and a touch-up right before opening. Spell out what’s excluded, like hauling debris or work above a set height.
• Recurring night cleaning is usually a price per visit or a flat monthly fee. Build it from the hours you estimated at the walkthrough, times a rate that covers wages, payroll costs, supplies, travel and your margin.
• Floor care and deep cleans work best as separate line items priced per service. That keeps the monthly price readable and gives the owner a menu of add-ons.

Price restaurants as restaurants. Apply your office rate per square foot to a kitchen and you’ll lose money on every visit, then cut corners or drop the account, and the owner will tell other owners. If you lose a bid to a lowball competitor, stay in touch. Owners often call back a few months later when the cheap crew stops showing up.

An outreach script you can adapt

To a general contractor, by phone or email:

Hi, this is [name] with [company]. We do post-construction and final cleans for restaurants around [area], and I saw your sign on the build-out at [address]. Do you have a final cleaner lined up for that one? If not, I can walk it this week and get you a price the same day. We’re insured, we work nights, and we’ll stay out of the way of your punch list.

To the owner, by email, a message on the business’s own page, or in person:

Hi, I’m [name] with [company]. We clean restaurants and bars around [area], at night after close. Congratulations on the new place. Before you open you’ll need a final clean once the equipment is in, and we’d like to do it. We can also quote nightly cleaning so you have a number when you’re ready. Could I walk the space with you this week? It takes about 20 minutes.

And three or four weeks after opening, a short note: “Hope the first month has gone well. If closing cleanup is eating into your staff’s night, we can take the floors and restrooms off their list. Happy to stop by for a walkthrough.”

Many of the same rules apply to anyone who sells to restaurants, and how to sell to restaurants covers who decides what in more detail.

Keeping a pipeline

A spreadsheet works fine, one row per place, with these columns:

• Business name and address
• Type of place (bar, café, full-service, fast casual)
• Stage, and the date it last changed
• General contractor, from the site sign
• Who you’ve talked to, by role, and how
• Post-construction status: not contacted, quoted, won or lost
• Recurring status: not quoted, quoted, signed or lost
• Next step and its date

On Monday, add new places and update stages. Midweek, make GC calls and site visits and do walkthroughs. On Friday, send quotes and follow-ups, and give every row a next step. Places that open with another cleaner go on a check-in-at-30-days list, and lost bids on a check-in-at-six-months list, because cleaners get replaced.

Mistakes that cost cleaning companies restaurant accounts

• Showing up after the GC has scheduled the final clean. Get in during construction.
• Bidding an office rate on a kitchen.
• Writing a vague scope. “Clean kitchen” turns into an argument. “Scrub kitchen floor and floor drains nightly” doesn’t.
• Leaving chemical residue near food, or unlabeled spray bottles in the kitchen.
• Missing a night. The restaurant opens dirty at 11 a.m. and the owner remembers.
• Skipping the paperwork. A nightly checklist and a few photos settle most complaints before they start.
• Treating the bar like the dining room. Sticky floors and mats behind the bar need their own attention.
• Taking on hood cleaning or grease trap work you aren’t equipped or certified for.

How Coming Soon Project fits

Coming Soon Project lists restaurants, bars and cafés before they open, built from public filings, across 96 metros. Each place page shows its stage and a timeline of its records, so you can tell a place that just filed a permit from one that’s “Almost ready” and needs a final clean this month. It also shows places that are changing hands, which are ready-made deep-clean leads.

It shows business names only, never owners’ names, phone numbers or emails. You still make contact through the GC on site, the landlord or the business’s own pages, and the walkthrough is where a cleaning job gets won anyway. For a wider look at sourcing, finding new restaurant leads goes deeper. City and ZIP pages and the ZIP search are free and show the first five places.

Pro membership is $39.99 a month, cancel anytime. It shows every result within 50 miles of any ZIP, sends a daily email alert for up to 25 ZIP codes at the distance you choose, and filters by stage and type of place, so you can watch only “Almost ready” places in your service area. Any search exports to a spreadsheet with links to each place’s page, a Google search and its Google Maps listing when it has one, which gives you the first columns of the pipeline above.