Restaurant pest control checklist for Regina kitchens

A Saskatchewan Health Authority inspector arrives at a Regina kitchen unannounced and walks the dishwasher, the line, the receiving dock, and the dry-storage room. If they find a single live cockroach during operating hours, the violation is documented. If they find harborage signs without a sighting, it's still documented. Either way, the binder is what saves the visit — a documented monitoring program with dated reports, signed by a licensed pest-control technician, demonstrates that the operator is on top of pest pressure rather than reacting after the fact.

Here's the checklist that produces that binder.

Daily — closing crew

The closing crew owns the first line of defence. Five things, no more than 15 minutes total when done as part of the standard close:

1. Break down all cardboard before the close. Banana boxes, produce cartons, dry-goods cases. Cardboard is the single most common cockroach vector into a Regina kitchen, and corrugation is the perfect harborage. Out of the building before lock-up.
2. Wipe under and behind the line equipment. Grease and food residue on the floor under the flat-top, fryer, and salamander draw cockroaches and mice. Hot water and a degreaser, every night.
3. Empty floor drains visible and accessible. Pull the floor-drain covers, brush the throat, run hot water. Drain biofilm is a fly breeding ground.
4. Inspect the dishwasher gasket and door seal. The single most overlooked German cockroach harborage in a Regina kitchen. Look for shed exoskeletons in the gasket folds.
5. Pull garbage outside the building before lock-up. Never leave full bags in the kitchen overnight.

Weekly — kitchen manager

The weekly check goes deeper into the equipment that doesn't move every day. Schedule it for a slow shift or the day after close:

1. Pull every floor-mounted appliance forward. Stove, salamander, prep tables on wheels. Inspect the floor and the back wall for grease, droppings, and harborage.
2. Inspect the door gasket and motor compartment of every reach-in cooler. Warm, dark, food residue — cockroach trifecta. Look for shed skins and live activity.
3. Drill or screw the bottom of any hollow tubular shelving and table legs that aren't already sealed. Cockroaches harbor inside the tube and emerge at night.
4. Replace bait stations placed by the pest-control technician. Bait dries out or is consumed; weekly inspection keeps the monitoring program honest.
5. Walk the receiving dock perimeter. Check the door sweep, the dock plate, and the wall behind the trash compactor for mouse rub marks and droppings.

Monthly — pest-control technician visit

A monthly Real Pest Control commercial visit covers the structural work that can't fit into a closing crew checklist:

1. Full kitchen inspection at the right time of day. Cockroach inspection happens after the line is cooled — typically between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. Mouse inspection during business hours is fine.
2. Bait station placement and replenishment in cabinet hinges, hollow shelving voids, equipment motor compartments, floor-drain chases, and the receiving-dock wall. Stations are documented on a floor-plan diagram kept in the binder.
3. IGR (insect growth regulator) refresh in stockroom voids, behind cooler motors, and in floor-drain chases. The IGR is what breaks the cockroach reproduction cycle; without it, gel bait alone is treating symptoms.
4. Perimeter check for rodent entry points outside the building — dock plate gap, dryer-vent surround, gas-line penetration, weep holes in the masonry. Sealed with hardware cloth and exterior caulk as found.
5. Written report uploaded the morning after the visit, formatted for the operator's food-safety binder. Photographs of treated areas, products used, application sites, technician licence number.

What ends up in the binder

The food-safety binder kept at the kitchen needs to show:

• The pest-control company's licence number (Saskatchewan Pest Management Business License)
• Date and time of every service visit
• Areas treated, products used, application sites
• Names and signatures of technicians
• A floor-plan diagram with bait station locations marked
• Records of any pest sightings reported by the kitchen crew between visits
• The current PMRA product label for any pesticide in use on the property

An SHA inspector who opens the binder and finds 12 months of dated reports with technician signatures has a very different conversation with the operator than one who opens a binder and finds nothing.

What kills the monitoring program

Three operator behaviours that consistently produce failed inspections:

• Skipping the day-14 or day-28 follow-up visit because the kitchen "looks clean." The follow-up is where the IGR cycle catches the second-generation hatch. Skipping it means the cockroach population rebounds in week 5.
• Spraying hardware-store insecticides on prep surfaces. Regulatory non-starter. Real Pest Control never applies pesticides to food-contact surfaces, and neither should the kitchen crew.
• Removing bait stations the technician placed. Crews sometimes pull stations during deep cleans and forget to reinstall. Document station locations and treat them as permanent fixtures until the technician retires them.

What to do next

If your Regina kitchen doesn't have a monthly monitoring program in place, the cleanest path is to start with a single after-hours inspection. The technician walks the kitchen with a flashlight after close, maps any active or potential harborage, and quotes a recurring contract based on the actual building rather than a generic monthly rate. See the cockroach extermination service page for the full protocol, or the German cockroach restaurant article for the Weyburn case that's the template for what monthly monitoring catches before it becomes a violation.