Retail & Common Areas · Kitchener
Retail and Common Area Cleaning in Kitchener
Retail and common areas are judged in the first ten seconds by someone standing at the door. Glass, entrance floors and washrooms carry almost all of it.
Two related jobs sit under this heading. One is the store itself - a King Street storefront, a unit in a Fairway or Highland plaza, a showroom on Victoria. The other is the shared space a property manager is responsible for in a multi-tenant building: lobby, corridors, elevator, stairwells, shared washrooms, and the entrance everyone tracks winter through.
Retail
- Glass. Entrance doors, storefront windows inside, display cases. Done properly with a squeegee and a detail cloth, because streaks in low winter sun are worse than no clean at all.
- Entrance floors. The first six metres take the salt, slush and grit. Matting, neutral cleaner in winter, and extraction on entrance carpet before it greys out permanently.
- Sales floor and fitting rooms. Vacuumed or washed, fixtures dusted, mirrors, benches, hooks and handles.
- Customer washrooms. Every visit, no exceptions, because a public washroom is the fastest way to lose a customer who was otherwise happy.
- Back of house. Stockroom floor, staff room, receiving door area - normally on a lighter frequency than the sales floor.
Timing is either early morning before opening or after close. Early morning wins for anywhere with an evening rush; after close wins for anywhere that opens at seven.
Common areas for property managers
Managers of office and mixed-use buildings downtown and along the ION corridor generally need the same short list held to a standard: lobby glass and entrance mats, floors, elevator interiors and the door tracks that collect grit, corridors, stairwells including the handrails, shared washrooms restocked and cleaned, and the exterior entrance swept, including cigarette butts and the sand left over after a melt. Where tenant suites are cleaned by their own contractors, we work to the boundary in the scope and stay out of the rest.
Floor care as a separate line
Hard floor programs belong on their own schedule and their own budget line rather than inside a nightly rate: VCT stripped and refinished or scrubbed and recoated on a cycle, LVT deep cleaned, terrazzo and polished concrete burnished, ceramic and grout scrubbed, and carpet extracted. In Kitchener the sensible rhythm is a full round in early spring once the salt season is over, and a touch-up in the fall before it starts again.
Day porter
For a busy lobby, a plaza with heavy foot traffic or a building with meeting space, a day porter for a few hours each weekday keeps entrances, washrooms and common areas presentable while people are actually in them. It is the cheapest fix available for a building that looks fine at 7am and rough by noon.
Frequently asked questions
Can you clean before we open in the morning?
Yes. Early morning is the most common schedule for Kitchener retail - crews are in and out before opening, with glass and entrance floors done last so they are right when the doors unlock.
Do you do floor stripping and waxing?
Yes, as a scheduled project rather than part of a nightly rate. VCT strip and refinish, scrub and recoat, burnishing, grout scrubbing and carpet extraction are quoted per area so you can budget them properly.
We manage a multi-tenant building. Can you do only the common areas?
That is a large share of this work. The scope sheet draws the line between common area and tenant suite, so there is no overlap and no gap, and the tenants' own cleaners are not tripping over ours.
Serving Kitchener and surrounding areas. Contact us for a no-obligation quote specific to your property.