WindowBossPro Blog — Storefronts & Commercial

Restaurant Window Cleaning Accounts: Greasy Glass, Early Mornings and Managers Who Change

Restaurants are some of the best storefront accounts you can have. Their glass gets dirty fast, the owners care about how the front looks, and most want you back every two weeks. They are also some of the hardest to keep running smoothly, because of their hours, their doors and the way their staff turns over.

Why Restaurants Are Worth the Trouble

Restaurants are usually the first places you walk into when you sell on foot, as described in Selling Storefront Window Cleaning Door to Door: What to Say and When to Walk In. They are also the accounts most likely to say yes, because a dining room with smudged glass looks dirty to every guest.

Front glass and doors pick up fingerprints, smoke, cooking haze and the occasional sticky handprint from a child. A restaurant that cares about its look notices within a week. That makes a 14-day cycle easy to sell and easy to keep.

Timing Around Prep and Service

Every restaurant has a window, so to speak, when you can work. For a breakfast place, that might be before 6am or mid-afternoon. For a dinner restaurant, the morning is wide open and the late afternoon is not. Ask the owner or manager when you are least in the way and write it down.

In WindowBossPro, that time rule goes in the access notes on the address: “Clean before 10:30, kitchen staff arrives 10. Do not block the delivery door.” It shows on the tech's phone with the stop, so the tech knows the rule without having to ask. On the dispatch board, put restaurants with early cutoffs at the front of the storefront route and set the order by hand if auto-routing puts them too late.

Greasy Doors and Patio Glass

Restaurant glass is often dirtier than retail glass, especially near the kitchen, the entry doors and any patio. Doors take the most hands. Patio enclosures collect grease and smoke. Some restaurants have interior partitions or a glass wall into the kitchen.

Price those separately and record them on the address. The window details on each job include the count, the stories, the sides and extras, so a restaurant's stop might read “18 windows · 1-story · Inside & Outside” with a note about the patio. If the patio is only done monthly while the front is every two weeks, set up two recurring services with different minimum days between visits, and both will come due on their own.

Access and Keys

If you clean inside glass before the restaurant opens, you need a way in. Some owners meet you. Most eventually give you a key or a lockbox code and an alarm code. That is a big trust step, and it should be handled carefully.

• Keep the codes in the access notes on the address, not in a group text.
• Label keys with an account code, not the restaurant's name and address.
• Write what to do if the alarm goes off: who to call and in what order.
• Note when the alarm must be reset and the door locked.

The tech sees those notes behind their own PIN on the phone. For more detail, see Access Notes for Commercial Window Cleaning: Back Doors, Keys and Alarm Codes.

When the Manager Changes

Restaurant managers change often. The person who said yes to you in March may be gone by August, and the new manager may not know you exist. That is when accounts quietly disappear: a new manager sees an invoice, does not recognize it and stops paying.

A few things protect the account:

• Keep the contact current. When a new face meets you at the door, ask for their name and number and update the client record.
• Use custom fields. Store the manager's name and the owner's name separately, so you know who to call when the manager changes.
• Send photos. Before and after photos from the tech app show a new manager what you do without a meeting.
• Text after the first visit with a new manager. “Hi, we clean your windows every other Tuesday before open. Here is today's photo.”

Billing Restaurant Accounts

Single restaurants are usually easiest on card on file, charged when the tech taps Complete. The owner gets an invoice with line items and sales tax and does not have to do anything. A restaurant group with several locations can be set to Monthly billing instead and get one statement covering every location, each line labeled with the address.

If an owner prefers to pay invoices online, they can do it from the customer app, and past-due follow-up goes out automatically if they forget.

Keeping Restaurant Glass on Schedule

Restaurants reward the window cleaner who shows up on time, works around the kitchen and never needs reminding. Put the timing and access on the address, keep the cycle on the Waiting List, and keep the contact current. For the rest of the commercial toolkit, see the WindowBossPro commercial window cleaning software page.