Is your business a Restaurant or a Pestaurant?

Updated: Feb 17, 2023

With more and more restaurants and food outlets in Herefordshire grabbing the headlines in the Hereford Times in recent months due to poor hygiene and housekeeping practices resulting in pest infestations and health and safety concerns to staff and the public, this week we’re letting local restaurant owners know why they should have in place a pest management program.

Pest Control v Pest Management

When you’ve got a pest infestation in your food business there’s no getting away from that fact that you’ll need to get the pest controller in. An infestation puts your staff, customers and reputation at risk. If you’re lucky enough to call pest control in yourself, you can quickly resolve a pest problem with little or no disruption to your business operations and reputation. However, many businesses are dealing with a pest infestation because either their customers complain or, Hereford Council inspectors have been in and issued a food hygiene safety report.

Either way, you could be in for a lot of disruption, cost and damage to your business and reputation. Pest control is all very good and well when you’ve got a problem but why let it get that far?

It’s quite simple and what we bang on about all the time – prevention is better than cure!! That’s why pest management is something restaurant owners should consider an essential part of their business.

All too often we get a call to go into a food business to deal with a pest issue. We always give advice on how to prevent pests in the future – that’s a key part of the PGM Pest Control service – but unfortunately, whilst there are lots of responsible restaurant owners out there in Herefordshire, there are also a lot of restaurant owners who aren’t.

There are also those restaurant owners who, understandably, have commercial pressures and might be concerned about the costs of implementing a pest management program. It’s important to understand that pest prevention and management, over the longer term, is more cost effective than simply dealing with the same problem that arises time and time again because the root causes are not being dealt with properly to begin with.

Top 3 concerns from businesses about taking on a pest control contract

1. Pest management programs are expensive

You might think a pest management program is expensive but over the longer term, a contract is actually more cost effective. Pest control contracts are also designed to ensure that the risk of your business suffering an infestation is minimised through the regular monitoring by your pest controller. In fact, most pest management programs ensure you remain infestation-free throughout the contract term.

Rats, mice and other pests can cause enormous damage to property and the cost of putting it right can be astronomical – paying for a pest management program is preferable to paying for costly repairs.

And if you’re worrying about the one-off cost of a pest contract, at PGM & Son Pest Control Hereford we offer a number of payment plan options so that businesses can spread the cost of their pest control. Give us a call today and we can talk you through the options.

2. Customers will be concerned if they see pest controllers in our business

Actually, in our experience, most people are comforted by the fact that businesses are being proactive to keep out the pests. However, our pest management service is discrete; we’re flexible in visiting times so that your customers don’t even have to know we’ve been in. And, if we have to be on site when your business is open, that’s okay too – we have removable signs on our vehicle and our staff will cover up uniforms if asked to do so.

3. A pest control contract isn’t necessary, we can just call a pest controller if we get a problem

Well, it’s true you can simply call a pest controller when you find yourself experiencing a problem. However, in our experience, there isn’t usually a one-off problem in a food business. Unless you find the root causes of your problem and deal with those too, you’ll be finding that your problem comes back time and again.

And, that’s when you start paying the price – both in terms of the monetary cost of treating your pest problem and the reputational damage and operational disruption to your business.