If you’re in food manufacturing, you already know cleaning isn’t just about making things look tidy—it’s about compliance. And compliance isn’t optional. If your cleaning team isn’t getting it right, you’re risking failed audits, contamination, production shutdowns, and even losing major customers.
And yet, time and time again, I hear the same frustrations from food manufacturers.
One client put it perfectly:
“All I want is for my cleaners to turn up, work hard, do their job, leave the site clean, and go home. That shouldn’t be that hard… should it?”
You’d think it would be that simple simple. Your cleaners arrive on time, they clean your site, and go home when the job is done. But in food manufacturing, it’s not that easy. Most commercial cleaners just aren’t equipped to meet the strict compliance standards your industry demands:
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Why are so many commercial cleaners so ill-equipped to meet your standards of clean and compliance? And more importantly—how can you make sure you're working with a cleaning partner who can truly support your facility's needs? This article will break down exactly why most commercial cleaners fall short and what to look for in a cleaning provider that will actually keep your facility compliant.
Food manufacturing isn’t like any other industry, yet most commercial cleaning companies treat it like one. They show up, go through the motions, and assume the job is done. I've walked into massive food manufacturing plants—facilities with 10 or more full-time cleaners—and asked to see their SOPs, only to be met with blank stares. No written procedures, no clear training program, no real system.
Just a whole lot of hoping that everything gets done properly.
But hope doesn’t pass an audit. And it definitely doesn’t stop contamination.
So why do so many commercial cleaning companies get it wrong with food manufacturers like you? It usually comes down to four big failures—things that, time and time again, I see causing compliance issues. Let’s break them down.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat across from a cleaning provider and asked, “Okay, tell me what HACCP means to you.” And the response? Usually, silence. Or maybe a vague attempt at an answer that tells me everything I need to know—they have no real understanding of what’s at stake. In food manufacturing, you must trust your cleaners to eliminate contamination risks, meet strict safety standards, and make sure nothing slips through the cracks.
The challenge is that most traditional commercial cleaning companies are set up for offices, schools, or retail stores—places where cleaning is about dusting desks, vacuuming carpets, and wiping down surfaces. But food manufacturing is completely different. You’re dealing with airborne bacteria, cross-contamination risks, and specialized machinery that requires precise sanitation protocols. If your cleaners don’t understand those risks, they can’t possibly manage them.
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I once walked into a facility where cleaners had skipped sanitizing equipment simply because it hadn’t been used that day. They thought, “If it hasn’t been touched, it must still be clean.” But airborne bacteria doesn’t care whether you’ve used the machine or not. That piece of equipment still needed to be cleaned, sanitized, and swabbed. But because the cleaning team didn’t understand the industry, they skipped it—and the facility failed their audit.
This is why your cleaning provider must specialize in food manufacturing. If they don’t, they’ll miss critical steps, and those gaps could cost you everything.
This is one of the most common ways I see cleaning providers fail. Without proper training and documented processes, compliance is left to chance. If there’s no structure in place, then every cleaner is doing things their own way—guessing at what needs to be done, skipping steps without realising it, and missing the critical details that keep your facility safe.
I’ve seen it firsthand. A team of cleaners comes in, splashes around some chemical, scrubs a couple of things here and there, hoses it off, and calls it a day. But what’s actually getting done? Are they following the right sequence of steps? Are they using the right chemical concentrations? Are they swabbing after to confirm the job was done properly? If there’s no training or accountability processes, the answer is no.
And when there’s no structure, guess what happens next?
Not because they’re lazy, but because they’ve never been given the proper training, processes, or oversight. They’re left to figure it out on their own, and in a food manufacturing environment, that’s how compliance failures happen.
If you’ve ever done an audit, swabbed a surface, and had it fail, there’s a good chance it happened for one simple reason—your cleaning provider is cutting corners. And I see it all the time. Cleaning companies take shortcuts because they’re trying to save on one thing: labour.
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Proper cleaning in a food manufacturing facility isn’t quick. There’s a process—removing product residue, rinsing, applying the right chemicals, allowing for dwell time, scrubbing, rinsing again, sanitising, and then allowing for proper drying. Miss a single one of these steps as a cleaner, and you’re creating contamination risks instead of eliminating them. And yet, cleaning teams cut steps constantly to get in and out faster.
I’ve observed a cleaning crew hose down a piece of equipment and move on, thinking they’ve done their job. But if they haven’t let the chemical sit for the right amount of time or properly scrubbed the surface, the bacteria is still there. And if they don’t test afterward, no one knows there’s a problem—until your facility fails an audit or, worse, a batch of product gets contaminated.
This is what happens when there’s no structure, no training, and no oversight. One failure leads directly into the next.
A cleaning company can say all the right things, but if they’re not actually checking their own work, it means nothing. And yet, I’ve walked into massive food manufacturing sites and asked one simple question—“How often is the cleaning being audited?”— only to learn nothing is being audited. No regular checks. No structured oversight. Just a whole lot of assumption that the job is being done right.
That’s how compliance failures happen. If you’re not checking that your cleaners are following the right process, then you don’t actually know if they are. And when something goes wrong—when a swab fails, when an audit catches contamination—you’re left scrambling to figure out where the problem started.
At In-Tec, we don’t wait for problems to show up. At the end of every shift, our team leaders conduct an audit to confirm that cleaning has met compliance standards. Then, on a weekly basis, our senior management team carries out formal site inspections to ensure our daily audits are aligning with your QA procedures.
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When we take on a new food manufacturing site as a client, we don’t just show up with a cleaning team and get to work. We have a process. First, we meet with you onsite to walk through your facility and get a full understanding of what’s required. We don’t make assumptions—we physically inspect your site to see exactly what needs to be cleaned, where the risks are, and what compliance standards you need to meet.
Then, we go a step further. We’ll observe your current cleaning provider—whether that’s an internal team or an outside company—to see what’s actually being done every night. We’re not just looking at whether things appear clean. We’re looking for the gaps, the missed steps, the risks that could get you in trouble.
Following that, we put structure in place:
As we’ve already shared, at the end of every shift, our team leaders audit the work. We don’t wait until there’s a problem—we check that compliance is being met every single day.
A dry pet food manufacturing facility called us in because they had a massive compliance issue.
They were struggling to meet food safety standards, and their facility wasn’t up to the level required for an upcoming audit from two of their biggest customers. We stepped in with a specialised team of ten cleaners, fully trained for food manufacturing compliance. Once inducted, they worked seven days straight—including a public holiday—to bring the site back up to standard.
But we didn’t just clean the facility. We helped fix the root of the problem. We worked with their team to update their SOPs, retrain their staff, and put proper cleaning procedures in place so that they wouldn’t end up in the same situation again.
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The result? I saved this client’s bacon. And no, they didn’t produce bacon—they produced pet food. Because, when their customers came in for the audit the next week, they passed with flying colours. This is what happens when you work with a cleaning provider that actually understands compliance. Most cleaning companies just clean and leave. We solve problems.
Yes, most commercial cleaning companies will tell you they can handle food manufacturing, but (as we've discussed) when it comes down to it, very few actually know what they’re doing. The best way to find out if a cleaning provider is capable of keeping you compliant is to ask them one simple question—one I mentioned earlier:
“Do you understand what HACCP is?”
You don’t need a textbook definition. What you need to hear is this: “It can’t just look clean. It can’t just feel clean. It must be clean.” If they can’t give you that answer confidently—and back it up with real experience—they don’t understand food manufacturing. And if they don’t understand food manufacturing, they will fail you.
🔎 Related: How to Evaluate the Accountability of Your Commercial Cleaner (+ Examples)If they pass that test, there are still a few more things you need to know before signing that contract:
These questions separate the real food manufacturing cleaning experts from the companies that will get you in trouble. Because when your business is on the line, you don’t need promises—you need a cleaning provider that actually knows what they’re doing.
If you're interested in learning more on how to choose the correct commercial cleaning partner for your organisation, you can download our guide, 10 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Commercial Cleaning Company. Or you can contact us at any time with your questions, or to start a conversation about how we may be of service to you.