Restaurants & Cafes

Common pests faced within Restaurants & Cafes

Common pests faced by the food and beverage industry are as follows:

Ants

Even though ants do not eat a lot of food, it doesn’t take long for ants to infiltrate your stock. Once ants get into a building, they leave an invisible trail for others in their colony (hundreds or thousands of ants), to follow. Because of their strong survival instincts, ant colonies can be very difficult to control once inside your facility. Ants can contaminate large quantities of your food in storage, therefore requiring you to discard them due to health purposes.

Beetles & Weevils

Beetles and weevils generally infest foods that contain cereals and grains, flour, seeds, buts, dried fruit, chocolate, spices and processed foods. They can infest your plant and equipment and can contaminate food by leaving body parts and cast skins, making food unfit for human consumption. In addition, these insects can change the physical and chemical properties of raw product ingredients, causing them to ‘cake’.

Birds

Bird droppings and feathers may contaminate surfaces such as tables and as a result, can increase the risk of spreading viruses, bacteria and etc when a patron eats at your restaurant.

Cockroaches

Cockroach can cause hygiene and health issues by carrying disease-causing bacteria and introduce this to your food supply or preparation of food. Good sanitary and hygiene practices are required to help prevent infestations and issues inside and outside of the kitchen. Cockroaches may enter from and hide in areas through door spaces, pipes, windows and junction boxes to name a few. As cockroaches are primarily nocturnal, they are generally not visible to the human eye and therefore, difficult to detect.

Flies

Flies are one of the most common carriers of diseases in Australia. Also, flies are a common pest to the food industries. Flies carry more than 100 pathogens which can cause disease in humans, such as E. coli, parasitic worms and fungi. It’s important to identify which species are present as each has its own attractants and breeding habits. Fly species found in the food industry include:

1. Common ‘House’
   Flies This specie breeds on moist or decaying garbage. Coming into contact with food and equipment, flies will transmit disease-causing bacteria and thereby contaminate everything they contact.
2. Fruit Flies
   Fruit flies are attracted to food odours. You generally find fruit flies when fruit are either ripe, rotting or decaying whilst being left out in the kitchen. Fermenting sugary liquids are an attraction to Fruit flies which allows them to feed and breed. This liquid may accumulate in garbage bags, drains, spills and even cracks in wet doors and floors.
3. Drain Flies
   A different specie to the common fly; these flies breed and thrive inside your drains. Drain Flies are attracted to food odours.

Mites

Mites can generally infest stored products such as cereals, cheese, nuts, eggs, fruit and flour. They can enter packaged items made of paper, cardboard, plastic, cellophane and foil. As the entrance holes may be too small for the human eye to be seen, packaging may harbour these insects inside without being detected.

Moths

There are different types of moths but depending on each breed, moths can generally infest ingredients and dry food products that contain nuts, dried fruits, flour, cereal, oil seeds, cocoa beans and grain. In addition to making food unfit for human consumption, moths can change the physical and chemical properties of these raw product ingredients, causing them to ‘cake’.

Rats & Mice

Rats and mice can cause hygiene and health issues and generally breed and infest areas that are close to food. With the right conditions and climate, their population can explode and given that restaurants and cafes have large amounts of food supply, they can infiltrate your food supply network.

Rodents can enter through gaps in roofs, walls and under doors.

They can contaminate access routes and surface areas with urine, droppings and filth picked up from the environment. Rodents transmit diseases such as Salmonellosis, Leptospirosis and Lyme Disease. They also carry ectoparasites, like ticks and fleas, and the diseases they transmit. Rodents can also cause inventory and product damage along with equipment and machinery damage and structural damage to your premises or even tarnish your brand name.