Move-out cleaning for shops, restaurants and offices: what is different

Handing back a shop, a restaurant or an office is not simply a bigger version of a move-out clean in a home. The requirements sit somewhere else, the grease sits somewhere else, and the work usually has to happen when there are no customers. Here is what is different.

The lease is stricter, and it is the answer key

A commercial lease usually describes the handover condition in far more detail than a residential one, and wording such as "returned newly refurbished" or "in the same condition as at takeover" means something specific that a landlord can measure you against.

Find the handover clause before you book anything at all. If it requires floors stripped, keys to every room, signage and adhesive removed, or reinstatement after your own installations, that is the list the job has to be written from. Send it to us and the points go into the quote rather than appearing afterwards.

Shop: floors, glass and everything that was stuck on

In a shop it is the floor area and the frontage that decide the impression, and it is rarely ordinary dirt that takes the time.

• Adhesive residue. Price labels, offer signs, window vinyl and double-sided tape behind shelving and signage. It is the single most underestimated item, and it is slow work, because the glue has to be dissolved without scratching the glass or pulling the paint off.
• Coated floors. Vinyl and linoleum in a shop usually carry polish, and after years of trolleys and shoes it has worn unevenly. That needs a machine, not a mop.
• Frontage glass and the entrance, inside and out, including frames, tracks and thresholds where sand and salt collect all winter.
• Stockroom and back of house, almost always worse than the shop floor, because no customer ever saw it.
• Sign brackets and fixing holes, which often have to come down, with cleaning behind them.

Restaurant and cafe: grease is the whole job

In a kitchen it is not about dust. It is grease, and grease behaves differently: it creeps, it builds in layers, and it sits where nobody looks.

• Extraction hood, filters and grease traps. The filters come out and soak, and the surrounding edges are stripped.
• Behind and under everything. Range, fryer, fridge and freezer all pull out. That is where the floor is worst, and it is always what gets checked.
• Wall tiles and the ceiling above the cooking line, where grease has been laid down over years.
• Drains, grates and floor gullies, which give themselves away by smell.
• Cold rooms and freezers, including seals, shelves and trims.

Important: the grease separator and the ventilation ducting are not cleaning. The separator has to be emptied by a tanker, and duct cleaning is regulated specialist work with its own documentation. We clean the hood and the filters, but the duct behind it is a different trade, and that has to be clear in the agreement so nobody assumes it is covered.

Office: carpet, cables and the tea kitchen

An office often looks clean and rarely is, because the dirt is spread evenly rather than visibly.

• Carpet. Desk chairs on castors leave dark tracks that vacuuming does not lift. If the carpet has to be handed back clean, that is carpet cleaning and it is agreed separately.
• Cable trays, floor boxes and under sit-stand desks, never vacuumed because something was always in the way.
• The tea kitchen with coffee machine, fridge and dishwasher: limescale, coffee oils and forgotten cupboards.
• Glass partitions and meeting rooms, where fingerprints and old whiteboard marker are the first thing anyone sees.
• Server and plant rooms, usually agreed separately, because you cannot vacuum or introduce moisture freely around the equipment.

It has to happen when there are no customers

The biggest practical difference between commercial and residential is timing. A shop can rarely close on a weekday to be cleaned, and a restaurant cannot at all. So commercial jobs typically fall in the evening, at night, at the weekend, or in the days between one tenant leaving and the next arriving.

That puts demands on access: who unlocks, who has the alarm code, what happens if the alarm goes off, and who holds keys to the stockroom, the plant room and the outdoor bin store. Worth settling before the day, not at ten in the evening.

VAT instead of the private tax deduction

Here is a difference worth knowing. The servicefradrag applies to private homes and holiday homes, not to businesses, so that route is closed to a company.

On the other hand, cleaning is an ordinary operating cost. If the business is VAT registered, the VAT on the invoice can normally be deducted, and the expense goes into the accounts like any other running cost. This is not tax advice and it depends on the company's circumstances, so take it up with your accountant. The point is simply that a commercial quote and a private quote should not be compared krone for krone, because they are treated differently.

Keys, alarm and access

Commercial leases almost always come with an access arrangement, and that is what most often wrecks the schedule. It needs to be clear who unlocks, whether the alarm is off, whether there is water and power, and whether the lift or the back entrance can be used to get equipment in.

If the unit is in a centre or a pedestrian street, there are usually rules about when you may drive in and where waste can be left. We ask for that up front, because a locked back door at six in the morning costs the whole planned slot.

What we need in order to give a fixed price

Commercial premises vary enormously, and a square metre figure alone does not say enough. Send us four things and we can usually price it without visiting: the floor area and what the premises were used for, the handover clause from the lease, a few photos of the kitchen, floors and stockroom, and when we are allowed to be there.

Shall we take it?

We are a small fixed team based in Bork. We do commercial move-out cleaning in Ringkobing, Skjern and Tarm, Varde, Esbjerg, Herning and Videbaek. A fixed written price before we start, work outside opening hours by arrangement, and a walkthrough at the end. See also the page on commercial cleaning or the full move-out cleaning checklist.