A store gets dirty in a different pattern from an office. Most of the soil comes through one door, so the first few metres of floor take the beating. Hands land on the same push plate, the same counter and the same fitting-room mirror all day. Dust settles on fixtures and shelf edges at eye level, exactly where customers look. A retail clean puts its time where the customers' attention goes.
We clean retail stores, units in plazas and shopping centres, and showrooms, on a schedule built around your trading hours: early, before you open, or in the evening after you close. Before the first visit we agree the scope, including what we touch and what we leave alone. Most stores want merchandise left exactly where their staff put it.
If you also have back offices or a head office to look after, that's janitorial work on its own scope. This page is about the part of the business your customers walk into.
Scope of work
Where a retail clean spends its time
Laid out the way a customer walks through the store. The scope sets which of these happen every visit and which rotate through the week.
Storefront and entrance
- Door glass, frames and push plates
- Display windows, inside and out at street level
- Entrance mats vacuumed, and lifted to clean the floor underneath
- Vestibule and entry floor
Street-level glass. Tell us about anything higher when you ask for a quote.
Sales floor
- Hard floors dust-mopped and mopped
- Machine scrubbing where the floor needs it
- Carpeted areas vacuumed and spot-treated
Carpet that has greyed along the aisles needs a deeper clean on its own cycle. Commercial carpet restoration.
Fixtures and displays
- Shelf edges, racks and display tables dusted
- Glass display cases wiped
- Cleaned around stock, not under it, unless the scope says otherwise
Checkout and fitting rooms
- Counters and checkout touchpoints disinfected
- Fitting-room mirrors, benches and hooks
- Fitting-room floors
Washrooms and staff room
- Customer and staff washrooms cleaned and sanitised
- Staff room counters, sink, tables and appliance fronts
Back of house
- Garbage and recycling out to your bins or the building's garbage room
- Stockroom and receiving floors swept
- Staff entrance
After close
How an after-close visit runs
Most retail cleans happen once the last customer has gone. The order stays the same every time, so nothing gets cleaned twice and nothing gets missed.
Garbage and touchpoints
Bins on the floor, at the checkout and in the washrooms go out first. Then the door glass, push plates, counters and fitting-room mirrors.
Dust from high to low
Fixtures, shelf edges and display tables, worked from the top down so the dust lands on the floor and not on something already done.
Washrooms and staff room
Cleaned and sanitised, with each room's floor finished before moving on.
Floors last, back to front
Vacuuming and mopping finish at the entrance, so nobody crosses a clean floor to leave. Mats go back down once the floor under them is dry, and the store is locked up the way the scope says.
Location
Mall, plaza or street front
Where the store sits changes the job more than its size does.
Mall unit
Suits
Stores inside an enclosed shopping centre
The landlord usually looks after the concourse; your unit is yours. Shopping centres have their own rules for after-hours contractors, such as signing in with security and fixed access times. Tell us what your landlord or the centre's management requires when you ask for a quote, and we'll go through it with you before anything is booked.
Plaza unit
Suits
Units that open straight onto the parking lot
There's no concourse between the lot and your door, so grit, salt and slush come straight in, and the entrance carries most of the work. Storefront glass faces the street and the sun, which shows every streak. Several units in one plaza can share a schedule. The lot and the sidewalk aren't part of the clean.
Street front
Suits
Main-street shops and showrooms
Foot traffic straight off the sidewalk, display windows that do the advertising, and often a tight space with nowhere to park a cart. An early clean before opening suits a lot of these stores, so the glass and the floor are at their best for the first customers.
Calgary winters and the holiday rush
From roughly November to April, the entrance is the hardest-working floor in the store. The City treats the roads with salt and with pickle, a mix of salt and fine gravel, and both come in on customers' boots: the salt as a white film on hard floors and a crust in the mat, the gravel as scratches across the first few metres. In salt season the entrance and mats usually need doing more often than the rest of the floor. Keeping entrances clean through a Calgary winter goes into the detail.
The holiday season puts heavier traffic on top of that, and longer opening hours shrink the window for cleaning. If your hours change for November and December, tell us early and we'll fit the schedule around them.
Keys, alarms and what stays untouched
A retail clean usually happens with nobody from the store there, so access gets settled before the first visit: who holds keys or a fob, how the alarm is set, and who to call if something isn't right.
So do the boundaries. The cash office, the stockroom shelves and anything behind the counter can be off limits, and merchandise stays where your staff put it unless the scope says otherwise. It's easier to agree that in writing than to sort it out after something has been moved.