All crockery, cutlery and glassware orders from us include our "send it back dirty" service as a mandatory option. Find out more about how that service works
All crockery, cutlery and glassware orders from us include our "send it back dirty" service as a mandatory option. Find out more about how that service works
Let’s face it, washing up is a horrible job. It’s the last thing you want to do when the morning after a big event – particularly if you’re feeling a little bit delicate or tired after an evening’s excesses. Luckily, our customers don't need to worry about cleaning up after their parties too much as we include "send it back dirty" as a mandatory option on all cutlery, crockery and glassware orders.
While we’re happy to wash up everything for you using our professional wash plant, there are a few things that make for less stress all round. We’ve put this little blog post together to help you to help us with this service.
The most common item we wash up at our warehouse is crockery. Whether it’s plates or bowls, cups or saucers chances are we’re going to end up washing up a few thousand every week during the busy summer season.
The wash plant is essentially a commercial version of the household dishwasher. It cleans and rinses the plates using the same methods as the unit in your kitchen does – and therefore it’s important to take the same steps before loading it in the same way you would load your own dishwasher.
This means it’s important for plates to be free of food debris before being returned to us. We ask our customers that like they would at home, they scrape any remaining food from plates into the bin before putting them back into boxes ready for them to be washed. Food debris which is left remaining within the packing boxes will only fester and turn to mould as the box is transported back to the warehouse – and it’s only makes things harder for our staff to clean when they are returned and may in turn incur replacement charges if crockery is uncleanable.
If you really want to be helpful, putting similar size items into each box makes life much, much easier in the warehouse. We know this isn’t always possible, but this is massively appreciated when our customers can do it.
As you can imagine, we clean a fair amount of cutlery in a week that has been returned from hire. While there are large quantities of it, washing cutlery is not the onerous task that washing dishes and plates can be.
Even so, there are things that a customer can do to help make it an easier task. Like crockery, we ask our customers to ensure cutlery has food debris scraped from it wherever possible, particularly with things like big serving spoons. This helps ensure that the boxes they come back in are as free from food debris as possible, and minimises the chance of anything funky growing in the box before it is opened for washing.
One of the biggest reasons we made our send it back dirty service compulsory is to prevent breakages. Glassware in particular is most likely to be broken or damaged while on hire while it is being cleaned, and as such it's much easier for us to do clean glassware safely.
Like with crockery, all glassware should be emptied of any liquid or food debris before being packed into their crates. We appreciate this isn't always the nicest of jobs but as with crockery, it doesn't take long for mould to form when glasses are left dirty, which causes issues when they are returned to our warehouse for cleaning.
One thing to note is that it’s really important to make sure glasses are packed in crates in the same way that they were delivered wherever possible. We have specialised crates for most types of glasses and they are packed in a certain way to prevent damage during transit.
Unlike crockery, cutlery and glassware, we do not charge any send it back dirty fees on linen. As linen has to be professionally cleaned after every use, the cost of cleaning it is factored into the price and we ask our customers not attempt to clean any linen.
That being said, there are things a customer can do to prevent stains and damage occurring, which of course can incur replacement charges. We ask that all linen is returned to us in the bags provided without any food debris, wax or glue attached and as dry as possible. Wet linen can form mildew very quickly which will ruin the fabric, rendering it unavailable for future high.
We supply linen in bags so that customers do not place it in boxes with dirty crockery, cutlery or glassware. While we appreciate that customers may think this is helping by keeping all items together, it can cause mould and mildew to form quickly, particularly if linen is put in a box with food debris.
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