Had a talk with my dish guy that made me question our whole cleaning system

Last Tuesday I was breaking down after a 12 hour catering shift and my dish washer Miguel asked me why we pre rinse everything before it goes through the machine. I told him that's just how we always did it. He said back in his old kitchen they put everything straight through a three tank sink with enzyme soak and only had to hit pans with the sprayer maybe once a shift. I stood there thinking about it and realized we must waste hundreds of gallons of water a year between the pre rinse sink and the sprayer. Our machine runs fine and the health inspector never says anything about leftover bits. But if we could skip the pre rinse step we might save on water and labor at the same time. Has anyone else tried cutting out pre rinse and jumping straight to a soak or enzyme system?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlie_allen29d ago

You mentioned Miguel talking about the three tank sink with enzyme soak. Yeah that's actually a solid setup. We switched to something similar about six months ago and it cut our water bill by almost a third. The key with enzymes is they need a little heat and time to work, like 110-120 degrees and maybe 5 minutes of soak for heavy stuff. We still hit the really caked on pans with a quick spray but everything else just goes through the soak and then straight to the machine. The health inspector actually liked it because the enzyme breaks down protein better than hot water alone. Only thing I'd warn about is if you've got hard water you gotta watch the mineral buildup in the soak tank.

xena_kim28d ago

Nah, I'm gonna push back on this one (respectfully, of course). Really seems like adding an enzyme soak just complicates things for marginal gains, especially if you're paying for the chemicals and monitoring temps constantly. Our kitchen runs fine with a standard 3-compartment sink and we swap water maybe twice a shift, water bill's not exactly killing us.