Keepingbugs at bay

Summertime is upon us and with it come flies, cockroaches, wasps, beetles and ants - pests, which, should they choose to infest your premises, could leave you with a fine as large as £20,000.

With such heavy penalties in mind, caterers will want to ensure that members of the insect kingdom stay away: so now is the time to check that defences are sound, capable of repelling invaders and with adequate power to destroy those that make it onto your territory.

Adopting basic precautions should provide effective protection against insects. These include ensuring sound hygiene standards in and around food preparation areas, with little or no spillage and dirt. Open cans or bottles and dustbins without lids all provide temptation for pests. Flyscreens will prevent houseflies, the larger blowflies (including bluebottles) and wasps from entering your premises. You also need to install fly-killing machines to destroy the insects which succeed in getting past the flyscreens.

INSTALLATION

Caterers who adopt a professional approach will naturally have done everything possible to restrict the entry of insects. However, it is hard to know precisely where to install flyscreens. The advice from Matthew Anderson, area hygiene & safety manager with Gardner Merchant Environmental Services, is to ask a pest control contractor to make a survey and then recommend sites where flyscreens will be most effective. "Flyscreens in some cases can be impractical: for instance, on patio doors in restaurants opening out on to a large balcony or seating area, or on large windows in restaurants. Flyscreens would have little aesthetic appeal and are not likely to be very effective. Where flyscreens don't work, the next logical step is to consider the effectiveness of fly-killers as an alternative."

The positioning of electronic fly-killers is critical. They operate by attracting insects to ultraviolet light, so the worst place to site them is near a window, where the UV lamps will have to compete with daylight - the effectiveness of the machine may be halved. The best place isa dark area where the ultraviolet rays will attract the insects well. Thelamps or tubes should be checked regularly and changed every year: a blue glow is no guarantee that the lamp is emitting UV light.

Electronic fly-killing machines should not be sited near food preparation areas because there is a risk of dead insects falling into the food.

When it comes to choosing a particularmake of electronic machine Anderson believes that most of the machines on the market are the same: "Some are marginally better and more powerful than others. Rentokil's new machine, which features a light transmitting polymer film with an adhesive surface which prevents dead insects from being ejected, is an interesting development."

Gardner Merchant Environmental Services plays very much the role of a consultant to clients. Anderson explains: "We advise our clients to be pro-active with the aim of demonstrating ‘due diligence' in matters of health and hygiene. About 50% of our clients have contracts with Rentokil. The rest use the services of other national contractors such as National Britannia, Check Pest or the Peter Cox Group. We also have small clients who use a local contractor when there is a problem and who tend to buy insect killers and flyscreens off the shelf."

Clients can use Gardner Merchant's purchasing power to obtain service contracts and equipment leasing schemes on potentially advantageous terms.

"There are a huge variety of ways to operate pest control schemes; it all depends on the size of the client's budget and the design and layout of the premises," Anderson says.

COSTS

At the Angel in Chippenham, a 44-bedroom hotel, general manager Joseph Donovan was given a demonstration of the new Rentokil fly-killer which has an adhesive surface: "It was very good in principle but, at a rental of £60 per quarter, I considered it to be too expensive. You can't buy the new machine outright, you can onlyrent it."

The Angel has a pest control contract with Rentokil which is reviewed annually: "Wherever I have worked the pest control contract has been in the hands of Rentokil. It seems to have 80% of the market and is very competitive and very efficient though I consider the £38 a quarter I pay in rental for one of its small fly killers to be a bit expensive."

When the current rental runs out, Donovan will buy a replacement outright which he says will be an Insect-O-Cutor machine obtained from a nominated supplier. The Angel is a Queens Moat Hotel and Donovan has been told not to buy Rentokil machines because they are considered to be "too costly", he says.

At Best Western Purchasing, which buys for more than 1,000 full and associate members including hotels, restaurants, leisure complexes, golf clubs and pubs, the nominated supplier is Insect-o-Cutor, part of the Peter Cox Group.

According to Rachel Catton, Best Western's purchasing officer: "The Peter Cox Group had been our nominated supplier for a number of years but in a review at the end of last year it was agreed that Insect-O-Cutor would be the nominated national supplier of fly-killing machines and window and door screens and would have a place on our central billing system. This increase in sales volumes would in turn increase the discount benefits to our members."

The relationship between Best Western Purchasing and Insect-O-Cutor appears to work well. In general, Best Western members are pleased with the products and the level of service, and, in addition to buying discounts, enjoy standard maintenance packages, free site surveys and advice on insect control.

One of the main advantages is that Insect-O-Cutor carries replacements of all the leading makes of ultraviolet lamps.

Not all Best Western members use the services of Insect-O-Cutor and, to exploit the potential, the supplier works closelywith Best Western on promotions featuringextra discounts or a "buy one product and get another free" exercise. Promotions are highlighted in member bulletinsand also by direct mail. Both parties contribute to the production and costsof the promotional campaigns.

The next promotion,to begin shortly, will feature Insect-O-Cutor'sdo-it-yourself kits for windows and chain screens aimed at catering establishments with hinged and sashed windows, offering a much cheaper alternative to custom-built products. o