Cockroach clean out in Brick, NJ restaurant

Recently, we received a call from one of our commercial accounts, a restaurant in Brick, NJ. They had suspended their pest control servicing for three months, deciding that any ongoing preventative servicing was not necessary because the pest problem that triggered our servicing was now under control. In retrospect, this was a poor decision. Of course, any business should be on the lookout to cut expenses. However, proper preventative pest control measures is one area where there is no room to cut corners. The risk is simply too great.

Restaurants and other food-related facilities can easily find themselves with a pest problem even when they have a spotless facility and proper sanitation and hygiene protocols are in place. Here, they had foods delivered daily to their premises. Every incoming shipment carries a risk of stowaway pests. While you may keep your facility in tip-top shape, you can’t assume that your suppliers do the same. And, as this business learned, with the reproductive rates of insects, especially cockroaches, it does not take long for a small problem to turn into a big one. A full inspection of the kitchen revealed a significant, well-entrenched cockroach infestation. If this business had kept up with its monthly servicing, this infestation would not have exploded to this level. 

Deal with this heavy roach infestation required a full-court press. I started by treating those specific areas with heavy roach activity with a liquid application. I also baited the harborage areas and flushed the roaches out of their hiding spots with an aerosol. For the hard-to-reach areas, I used a micro-injector to get into those tiny cracks and crevices and into the wall voids. This intensive treatment took hours to complete, not to mention a series of follow-up visits that were necessary to re-inspect and ensure that the roach population was knocked-down.  

Through diligent work, we were able to completely resolve this infestation, and the business was once again pest-free. However, at the end of the day, because of this infestation, they did not save any money by foregoing their monthly servicing. Even worse, they unnecessarily put their operations at risk had their been a health inspection during this overwhelming roach infestation. 

This particular job was a lesson of the importance of ongoing, proactive, preventative pest control for commercial accounts, especially restaurants. The restaurant manager assured me that after this episode, going forward, they would no longer be skipping their monthly servicing.