Many cleaning professionals visit the International Custodial Advisors Network (ICAN) Ask the Experts (ATEX) page for insight. We deliver advice to help you perform your job.
Friday’s Question
I am estimating a quote for a restaurant that is 5,000 square feet.
What I will be doing is:
- Cleaning the entire floor with multiple floor types: hardwood, carpet, epoxy, and tile
- Servicing six toilets, five sinks, two urinals, stalls, and bathrooms walls
- Dusting decorations and light fixtures.
How do I price this job? By the square foot?
I’ve done research and gathered that $0.11 per square foot per month is the general going rate.
Friday’s Answer
Our observation without knowing all the facts:
At $0.11 per square foot per month, your invoice will be $550. If you spend two hours a day (2500 square feet per hour) for the month (30.416 days on average), you will need to pay for 60.8 hours, assuming that the restaurant is open every day. If you pay $10 per hour for labor, your monthly labor will be $608 without any consideration for labor burden, which may add another 20 percent. That amounts to a loss of a least $58, which makes that projection unfeasible.
At $0.11 per square foot per day, you will be charging $550 a night which totals up to $16,750 a month. I doubt that will fly either.
They may not clear that much in a month!
Let’s work with the first assumption.
Even reducing your labor rate to the state minimum ($8.05), you will be paying out $489.44. Add 20 percent ($97.89) and just your labor cost moves up to $587.33. This is better since you are losing only $37 a month.
Your next option is to do the job faster. Let’s drop the hour to 1.5 or 3,333.33 square feet per hour. This drops the labor to 45.6 hours each billing cycle. Your labor cost will drop to $367.30 plus burden ($73.46) equals $440.76. You clear $109.24 or $3.59 a day.
But wait, as the TV ads say so often, there is more. You have not yet figured in the cost of anything but labor! And I seriously doubt you can do the job well in much less time. I see a lot of time and effort spent for little return.
Now, I don’t have all the details I would need to do a sound analysis or you, but I think you should be on track with the above. My point to you and all others reading and, I trust, wishing to benefit from this discussion, is simply what ICAN contributing writers have been saying for many years now: Do not rely on “going rates” or “average charges” or the estimates of other services in the neighborhood. Such reliance can bury you financially!
Things can change if the joint is closed a day or two each week.
Run the numbers. It can change things if you can do the work well in an hour a day. See if that is possible; it can change if you charge $0.16 or $0.18 per square foot per month and spend two solid hours keeping the place spotless. That would be my choice. And if there is someone poorly informed enough to try the “going rate” route, be thankful it isn’t you.
You need to factor in all the business-related costs of doing any job, and especially one as demanding as restaurants. Take another look at this from the standpoint of what you need to charge to make a profit and not what someone else thinks is necessary. There are a lot of dirty eating places out there—and now you know why.
– Lynn E. Krafft, ICAN/ATEX editor
View additional food-service-related questions and answers from ICAN/ATEX here.
