any golden corral cleaners here??

[matt sheppard]

i've got an opportunity to do a demo and bid for a local golden corral. does anyone here clean for any? presently they have a hack hwe company that cleans it weekly, leaving the carpets filthy and wet throughout the whole next day. i plan on offering a weekly encap/bonnet clean since i dont have a cimex yet. they clean traffic areas every week and whole area cleans every other week. most gc's are similar in overall sf so any pricing help would be appreciated.

thanks for your help

matt

 

[Mike Draper]

you should ask them if they are willing to start selling their food for cost to clients since this is what they want out of you. This is why they have a hack cleaning their carpet.

 

[Steve Toburen]

IF you want this type of work, Matt, seriously look into getting a Cimex. Insist on their employees doing the pre-vacuuming and you will fly down those traffic lanes plus the appearance will be much better than your "flood the carpets" competitor is doing.

Steve
SFS.JonDon.com

PS We did quite a few GC type of places that were not open for breakfast at 6 AM. Our crew would bang the restaurant out and then hit the first residential job at 8:30 or 9:00 with 250.00 or more under their belt.

 

[Numero Uno]

The one in my town is cleaned,every 10 days...

Appears to be rather well down.I would suggest using a high velocity fans and or air movers.This is one that has to be hwe according to manager.

If I did it I could further exemplify but I do not ...Good Day, Good Luck...

 

[Jeremy]

A cimex is great for large scale, commercial space and can be effective for a time in restaurants (the length of time is dependant on many factors), however I'd recommend an OP & a few towels as even though some encapsulants can emulsify grease, encapsulating it with "scrub and run" alone for extended periods of time can be a bit of a stretch.

That said, once it's emulsified it can be absorbed rather effectively via absorbant pads however, in effect extending the interval between HWE cleanings and making the account more profitable in the process.

Encapsulation is great when employed properly, as part of a maintenance plan. The better the plan is, the better the results, the ease of cleaning and the better the profit margin will be.

Like Rick Gelinas says, encapsulation can maintain a carpet well enough to make HWE the interim method of cleaning when employed properly. Taking that into consideration, in my opinion and experience a restaurant's need for removal of grease and grime is served well by OP with absorbant towels. In fact, I think it extends the interval quite a bit.

Here is a link to a post written by someone other than myself explaining it:

viewtopic.php?f=86&t=7606&p=82263&hilit=encapsulate+oil+water#p82263


Anyway, I have a very nice Demo unit available with pads and some juice at a VERY reasonable price... Give me a ring if you're interested. 812-754-1447.

 

[Royal Man]

They will be happier if you move and replace all the tables and chairs.

Plan on having 3-4 workers to accomplish the job.

1 to clean, 2-3 to spray encap juice, pre-vac and move & replace tables and chairs.

Plan on HWE every 3-4th time.

 

[joeynbgky]

The golden corral will not even entertain the thought of encap, or bonnet cleaning. They have strict policies that say at the corporte level that it has to be HWE! I thought most GC only got it done every 30 days! Those are pretty big stores, I would start at $500 each time and work your way down. The newer GC's are huge! It's different going into a small denny's and charging $300 bucks.

 

[floorguy]

hummm

 

[bob vawter]

and when the manager gets canned(usually every 90 days)...
the "new" manager" will be getting new quotes...
don't get sucked in...nite job AND a PITA!

 

[Jimmy L]

.

 

[Steve Toburen]

My advice is to find a better account than waste your very short lifespan chasing a no win situation.

You're not paying attention here, Jimmy. I don't want to waste MY lifespan cleaning restaurants. That is why you hire EMPLOYEES who will be delighted to waste a measured amount of their life span as long as their generous pay check does not bounce.

Not all restaurants are disloyal. In fact, when I sold my company I still had the first restaurant I had picked up when I was the new kid in town. We were still cleaning its carpets every two weeks- 16 years later. Can you imagine the money we took out of that account over 16 years?

And sure, the chain restaurants will be changing all the time. That is why you should have an ongoing sales and marketing effort out there. Your competitors do- why not you???

But hey- whatever floats your boat.

Steve
SFS.JonDon.com

PS When I sold my business we were cleaning over 50 restaurants and bars on a monthly basis (many of them early in the morning with our day crews). This gave me a nice cash flow base that I could depend on which in turn let me pick and choose our residential customers. So I now had the luxury to turn down marginal work and let my "bottom feeding" competitors (who were too proud to do restaurants) fight over my "scraps".

 

[joeynbgky]

Billy Lewis on here with the V, can help you out the most, I am pretty sure he knows this restaurant well.

 

[Ryan]

My advice is to find a better account than waste your very short lifespan chasing a no win situation.

You're not paying attention here, Jimmy. I don't want to waste MY lifespan cleaning restaurants. That is why you hire EMPLOYEES who will be delighted to waste a measured amount of their life span as long as their generous pay check does not bounce.

Not all restaurants are disloyal. In fact, when I sold my company I still had the first restaurant I had picked up when I was the new kid in town. We were still cleaning its carpets every two weeks- 16 years later. Can you imagine the money we took out of that account over 16 years?

And sure, the chain restaurants will be changing all the time. That is why you should have an ongoing sales and marketing effort out there. Your competitors do- why not you???

But hey- whatever floats your boat.

Steve
SFS.JonDon.com

PS When I sold my business we were cleaning over 50 restaurants and bars on a monthly basis (many of them early in the morning with our day crews). This gave me a nice cash flow base that I could depend on which in turn let me pick and choose our residential customers. So I now had the luxury to turn down marginal work and let my "bottom feeding" competitors (who were too proud to do restaurants) fight over my "scraps".

And you where able toSELL you business no one wants to pay anything for a list of residential customers who may or may not use you again, but a list of commercial contracts is actually worth something.

 

[BLewis]

Yes, I do know the GC's well. In my opinion they are the best resty account you can have. Why? because the majority of them clean bi-weekly. There are over 50 franchises and some will let their low volumn stores go 30 days, however most that have descent volumn clean every 2 weeks.

I don't believe there is any corporate mandate as to how they are cleaned, however they highly push the franchises to clean every 2 weeks!

I do not do near as many as I used to due to the fact that I am not traveling all over the country like before the wreck. However, it gets tempting sometimes.

We have them flip chairs and sweep. We move tables and hwe. Both techs will move tables in the first 2 sections and while first guy is pre spraying the second will move the balance of the tables in the restaurant. We just move them over one table width and then just work as a team and rotate sections and it flies. The small boxes will take around 3 hours to HWE and the Big Boxes will be more like 4-4.5 hrs. We get 350-400 per service since this is twice a month you are looking at 700-800 per unit or up to 10,400 per year (They are on a 13 period accounting calender)

When these checks arrive in the mail in the dead of the winter it feels pretty awesome. This was one quote that has always stuck in my mind from Steve T. (Thanks!)

If they ever build in BGreen I will be recommending Joey to the district manager. Also, you should always try to build your relationship with the district or the owner. This is easy, just have a VIP program.

 

[Jimmy L]

.

 

[Lee Stockwell]

We do four of them, one of them a twenty-nine year account. HWE truckmount with Prochem 405's. Monthly with a two-week touch up on the two highest volume sites.

We get our numbers they get theirs. They like us.

 

[joeynbgky]

Thanks Billy. We need one here, Im tired of driving to elizabethtown just to eat at GC! We do have a new olive garden here, I would love to have.

 

[Dolly Llama]

IF you want this type of work, Matt, seriously look into getting a Cimex.
We did quite a few GC type of places

Steve, could you share with us how much restaurant encRapping you or you employees actually did??

Thanks


Matt, restaurant work is typically low profit margin work.
That doesn't mean you can't make a profit, it does mean you need to be efficient to make a decent buck.
if you can get them for .15 to 18 cents a SF, you'd be doing good

or if you know how many SF pr hour you can do, charge by what you "need" or want to make pr hour


..L.T.A.

 

[tracywalker]

A few years back the manager at the Shelby NC GC told me that I could have the account if I was willing to beat the price of his current cleaner. $120 every 2 weeks for 3000sqft of carpet. I declined.

 

[Dolly Llama]

$120 every 2 weeks for 3000sqft of carpet. .

:shock: :shock:


..L.T.A.

 

[Mike Draper]

I love when I get offers like that. They think they are doing you a favor. I just smile and say " no thanks"

 

[tracywalker]

What surprised me was he was very happy with his current cleaner and just saw me and my wife having dinner and I had my shirt on. Not having any clue that I am just a broke d*ck hack he was willing to have no loyalty to his $120 guy. The kicker in the doing me a favor part was this was actually a visiting area manager so he was willing to get me a few more locations, each over 45mins away if I would beat the price.

I don't think he is with them anymore. I may stop in and just see what happens. I would be willing to do them for $300-$400.

 

[Jimmy L]

My first impression would be around that $400 range too.

If you can't make any money why do it?

I'm sure Steve has crunched the numbers so he would know if he would actually make money at $120 a pop.

Even if you SHAMPOOed the damn thing you wouldn't make any money.

 

[handdi]

10 sq ft in the carolinas is the norm
u can make money 1500 sq ft an hour u go in there and bust butt
but next day is screwed if your an small cleaner
lets see go in at midnite work till 4
the guys doin them here have second shift people
and they stay busy
i got a call from a nice rest ower we cleaned his house he said
he would not have his regular rest cleaner in his house lol

make a game plan and stick to it

 

[Mikey P]

NO established Owner Op worth his weight in Sodium Percarbonate would be caught dead wasting his time and skills cleaning shit holes in the middle of the night for anything less than 300 an hour.


If you HAVE to go less for what ever reason it better be a damn Chimp doing the work while you get you beauty sleep so you can charm Mrs Piftleton the next day.

 

[tmdry]

I had an account with 5 large restaurants that we did per month. I fired the account as it was just not worth the hassle, every month when the cleaning would be scheduled they would call a few days before the cleaning date and say it's not so bad yet, come in 2 weeks, this happened in just about every month. Or whenever we would get there, we would have to wait 45 to a hour for them to get the servers together to move all the tables, no matter what you tell them they do not care or listen, sometimes the tables would be moved sometimes it wouldn't. I can go on, but working 5 nights in a row, getting home @ 5am each of those days, sleeping thru 5 days because you're tired and couldn't work the next day, plus all the overhead w/ chems, pads, equipment, gas, and employees, just wasn't adding up.

So that's what you have to look at before you figure out what to charge, think backwards.

 

[Guest]

I clean one , every 2 weeks . Was getting in there on Tuesdays usually between 8:30 - 9:00 , but they pushed it back to 10 . I bring 2 machines and usually we are out in 1/12 hours. We charge them 275.00, they move tables and vac. Fairly easy money, bad side is nite work.

 

[Desk Jockey]

I bring 2 machines and usually we are out in 1/12 hours. We charge them 275.00,

That's 3-man hours, plus portal to portal add another man hour (15-minutes there and back per man).

That's 4-man hours for $275.00

$68.75 a man hour before you take out fuel, chem's, wear and tear on the unit, risk and liability.....plus it's after hours.

Every time i think missing out not doing restaurants, those kind of numbers wake me up to reality.

Add in what Bill said about them delaying you and that margin gets real thin, real fast.

 

[Ryan]

I bring 2 machines and usually we are out in 1/12 hours. We charge them 275.00,

That's 3-man hours, plus portal to portal add another man hour (15-minutes there and back per man).

That's 4-man hours for $275.00

$68.75 a man hour before you take out fuel, chem's, wear and tear on the unit, risk and liability.....plus it's after hours.

Every time i think missing out not doing restaurants, those kind of numbers wake me up to reality.

Add in what Bill said about them delaying you and that margin gets real thin, real fast.

If you pay your techs $12 an hour, then add in another $3 for taxes ect. Thats $15 an hour, take $10 for your chems and another $60 for wear and tear on your machines, then $15 for fuel. Total cost is about $145 to do that account that leaves you with a profit margin of $130 thats almost a 50% margin.

What am I missing? I thought I was liberal with my numbers, unless you guys pay you techs more then that. I know you have to figure in insurance, payments, rent ect. but those numbers are fixed amounts and don't change if you do the account or not. Might as well do the work.

 

[Guest]

I for one wouldnt want discourage any cleaner from making what they can , when they can . Obviously , it may not mean the same for some business owners that are established , but for some , and in this economic climate, it can mean the difference between survival and going under.

I for one aint too keen on letting equipment sit , especially when money can be made, and it can also be the difference from an employee getting 38 hours and forty . Sometimes it makes sense , and after serving in the military , there aint no such thing as a bad paying job.