The Best Rodent Control Techniques When You See Rats In A Restaurant

How to Protect Your Restaurant from Rodent Infestation

Food waste, sewer problems, water leaks, and clutter are common sites in restaurants. Rodents multiply fast, leaving you with thousands of losses and exposure to hazards. Rodent infestation affects not only your food but also your staff and clients. This post will help you deal with rodent infestation in your restaurant and how to effectively use rodent control.

What is Attracting Rodents to Your Property?

Rats and mice do not just come to your premises. There has to be something attracting them to your property. Restaurants have the right conditions for rodent breeding, from warmth to food and water. Two rats can grow to a population of over 1200 rats in a year, making the place a health hazard. Unsanitary conditions in a premise often attract rodents and pests. Below are the things attracting them to your restaurant:

• Food. Wild rats, sewer rats, brown rats, and mice come to your premises looking for food. When they find food scraps in the garbage bin, on the floor, in the compound, or in food storage, they make their home there.
• Warmth. During the cold season, rats start looking for warmth inside people’s homes and business premises. Restaurants are always warm and often open for rats to come in.
• Water. Rats and mice need water to stay alive. Due to the hot Florida weather, most rats will not get water in the bush. They have to move to places with a constant water supply, and your restaurant will be the first stop. Leaking taps, open water sources, and standing water in your premises will make rats your regular guests.
• Clutter. Unmowed grass, bushes around your food business, dead leaves, and waste offer rodents and other pests a hideout. They use this clutter to make nests and hide from predators and elements of the weather.

Risks Associated with Rodent Infestation in Restaurants

Rodents cause damage worth $19 billion in the US every year. This damage can be in the form of structural damage to property, damaged electric cables, water supply, and plumbing materials, disease, and food wastage. In addition, rodents are a major cause of house fires. Below are the risks associated with rodent infestation on your premises.

Rats Cause Economic Losses

Gnawing food, packaging materials, electric wires, furniture, and other materials will leave the restaurant owner with massive losses. In addition, public health inspectors may not allow you to sell food that is contaminated with rodent droppings or urine, which could cause you significant losses. The best way to deal with serious contamination issues is by getting rid of all rats and rodents before they start multiplying.

Food Poisoning

Rats pose serious health concerns to restaurant owners, employees, and customers. Rodent droppings and urine contain bacteria responsible for food poisoning. Tummy aches, headaches, and fatigue are some of the popular symptoms they may experience. Protect your workers and customers by seeking professional commercial rodent control services in Florida. Skymark’s Pest control team is always ready to help.

Diseases and Infections

Rat feces, urine, dead rodents, contact with an infected rodent, and infected fleas spread diseases such as:

• Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) is caused by breathing air contaminated with the droppings, urine, or nests of wild rats, deer mice, rice rats, and white-footed mice. Symptoms of HPS include fatigue, fever, severe muscle aches, runny nose, sore throat, stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, chills, dizziness, breathing difficulties, and headaches.
• Leptospirosis is caused by contaminated water and soil.
• Plague, which is caused by bites of infected fleas.
• Tularemia. This bacterial infection is caused by drinking contaminated water, inhaling polluted air, contact with an infected rodent, and bites from infected ticks. Symptoms vary, but the disease can be life-threatening.
• Rat-bite fever is a bacterial disease caused by rat bites.
• Salmonella is a bacterial infection caused by consuming or drinking contaminated food and water.

Rat Infestations Make You Non-compliance with Health Codes

Rat presence in your food premises is a sign of the unsanitary conditions you operate in. To remain compliant with the health requirements of Florida, you need to ensure that your restaurant business is free from rats, rodents, and other pests. Skymark pest control experts can inspect your premises before public health officials come, identify all the hiding places of rodents, and offer pest control services to curb the problem early.

Pest Control Tips to Prevent Rat Infestation in Your Restaurant

It is better to prevent rat infestation than to get rid of them. The following tips will help you keep rodents from your premises.

Remove The Food Source

Restaurants are never short of rodent food, whether it is the raw food in the store or waste food scraps in the garbage bins. You need to find a way to remove the food source by storing cereals in properly sealed packaging material, emptying the garbage containers regularly, avoiding piling dirty dishes, sealing food in pest-proof containers, and keeping food scraps from the tables and floor.

Seal All The Rodent Entry Points

Holes, exterior cracks, doorways, openings around pipes, and windows. Fix repairs and seal all unnecessary openings that could serve as entry points for rodents to your business premise. Incorporate physical barriers at the entry point to keep them from accessing your property.

Find and Destroy Their Nesting Materials

Rodents use nesting materials such as cloth, hair, paper, straw, and cotton to make their sleeping or breeding area comfortable. Sometimes, they can hide in the ceiling, inside the grain, or burrow underground. Check out for signs of rodent infestation and follow the rodent droppings to find their nesting area, then destroy it or set a trap inside. Rat poison can also kill rats, but remember, dead rats cause diseases too. Get a professional commercial rodent control to help you.

Declutter Your Premise

Cleanliness is an effective pest control strategy that can help you get rid of rodents from your property. Remove any waste food that could be lying around, boxes, food packaging materials, trees whose branches hang over the hedge, and bushes around the building.

Fix Water Leaks

Leaky taps and water pipes attract rodents to your property. Water helps rats and mice to stay healthy, and so when they find a free source attracts them to make a home within your restaurant. If rodents do not have access to water for 4-5 days, they will die of dehydration. Let them go looking for water elsewhere; it is one of the surest ways to get rid of them from your restaurant.

Set Up Traps and Baits

No matter how cautious you are to protect your premises from mice and wild rat infestation, your rats and mice will always keep finding a way to share the food you feed your customers. Using pest control methods like setting up rat traps and rat bait stations at the rodent entry points near the perimeter fence or exterior wall, food stores, and anywhere else the rodents may use to enter the premises will help keep them away. 

Get A Cat

Cats prevent rats from invading your premises. Even if your cat does not chase the rats and mice, its smell will be enough deterrent.

Hire Rodent Control Professionals

A single rodent can cause a serious rodent infestation on your property. This is because the rat population in a comfortable area grows very fast. As soon as you spot rodent activity within your premises, call a commercial rodent control expert to prevent rats from multiplying or ever accessing your food service establishments in the future.

Tired of Sharing Your Food Premises with Rodents? Call Skymark Pest Control Services for Speedy Action

For all your pest control, rodent extermination, and roach extermination services in Florida, call us at 352-552-3290.  Our pest control techniques are family and pet-friendly. With over 20 years of experience in rat control and trained technicians, your satisfaction is 100 percent guaranteed. Get in touch for 5-star service today.