 Welcome to Restaurants Hawaiʻi, I am your host, Darryl Moksova, Executive Director of the Hawaiʻi Restaurant Association. Thank you for joining us today. Today our topic is a very, very interesting and very necessary topic for all businesses and restaurants. What benefits maintenance is the team to helping you as your business owner spend less time and money on management and will help improve your operation? The Hawaiʻi Restaurant Association today is discussing this important topic with two of our members. The first member is Mafi from Island Vinn, here is Mafi. Hi. Hi, and with Kilauea pest control, I have two guests, Taylor and Jimmy. Hi Taylor, hi Jimmy. Hey, nice to be here. Hey, so today's discussion we're talking about why scheduled maintenance and the services that these two members provide is so critical to our operations, our facilities. So let me start off with Mafi. Mafi, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about Island Vinn cleaners and how you got started and maybe some of the companies that you support. Okay. Well, my name is Mafi Kofusi, I'm one of the owners of Island Vinn cleaners. And we actually got started, the company started in 2017 over in Kauai and then we purchased it in 2019 and brought it over here to Honolulu. And the reason why we started this company is because we noticed that there was a lot of people that, you know, they take out their trash and they have the trash service, but the cleanliness of the trash bins, it causes a lot of pests and a lot of, you know, a lot of bad smells. And so what we do is we are the first company here in the state of Hawaii to clean trash bins and commercial dumpsters. And since starting our company here in Honolulu, we've expanded into kitchen exhaust cleaning and as well as trash you clean. Very nice. Thank you. Such an important, important part of a facility. All right, so now we have Kilauea pest control and I am personally, you know, want to thank these members, they also take care of my residents. And so I have here Taylor and I have Jimmy. Taylor, you want to get started? Sure. Thank you, Cheryl. I'm so happy to be here. I'm glad to share this screen with you. Our service is going hand in hand. So I'm sure we'll be able to get into that today quite a bit. Real quickly about Kilauea pest control. We are locally owned and operated. It was founded in 2002. By the owner. It was him and his wife. And I'm glad to share this screen with you. Our service is going hand in hand. So I'm sure we'll be able to get into that today quite a bit real quickly about Kilauea pest control. We are locally owned and operated. It was him and his wife first. So he was in the field servicing pest control and his wife was at home taking care of the accounts. And so, and from then on 20 years later, here we are as one of the largest operating local pest control companies in the island, which allows us being that large, but also local allows us to know why you're really well, but also be able to work on the individual home all the way up to do, we do quite a bit of state contracts with the Department of Education, Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture, Department of Agriculture. And I will be talking more about the, like the airport and hospitals as well as a lot of commercial businesses too that we'll get into a lot today on how we're involved in there. So that's a little bit about us. Thank you Taylor and Jimmy. Could you please introduce yourself? Yes. I'm Jimmy Fitzgerald. I'm the commercial accounts manager with Kilauea pest control. And I have been on and off with Kilauea since the going to school and then every time I went to school, Kilauea helped me pay for my school and now I work for them as official accounts manager. Awesome, well, welcome. Nice to meet you, Jimmy. I've met Taylor and Mafi before and so this is really great. So today we're talking about, you know, pests and keeping our restaurants, our businesses and our residents pest free because, you know, post-COVID, our customers are really more attentive to cleanliness issues. And we know that if a customer normally sees a bug, they normally don't say anything but they don't come back to your restaurant and they normally tell all of their friends and family. And as we know, extreme infestations and red placards quickly make our media our news. So we're trying to avoid that. One of the ways is by keeping our trash bin clean and the trash bin area clean. Mafi, you want to go a little bit more into detail of how you do that in the service that island cleaners provide? Yeah, so what we do is it's a two-step process. So we have commercial dumpster lifters where you stick it inside the, you know, the grooves and then you lift it up and what it does is it pressure washes the inside of the trash and the dumpsters. And the reason why that process is so important is because a lot of your residents, a lot of the tenants, a lot of the restaurant owners, that's their biggest complaint is not only the smell but of course the pest, which is why Kilaway pest control, when I saw them on here, I was taking a while. You know, there's been so many commercial trash rooms that I've been in where the roach infestation, that's where everything generates. And so when you're inside those trash rooms, there's only one way really inside the building is through their trash. And if you're not cleaning those and maintaining those dumpsters, eventually it travels in through the walls and through the trash shoot and it gets into the residents' homes and it becomes a nightmare. It becomes a nightmare for the resident managers where they complain to us and then in turn, then we are able to turn the business over to people like Kilaway where they can go in there and treat on a monthly basis, quarterly basis, keeping that infestation down. That's excellent. And you're right. I know that how you say this, you measure cleanliness by what's on the outside when you're walking into a restaurant or a business. And so when you see that trash area, just not the cleanliness, then it makes you very concerned about the inside, right? So, Taylor, you wanna cover a little bit about how you at Kilaway and your services help businesses and restaurants? Sure, I might toss this over to Jimmy as well, but I'll get us started. The trash area, especially trash shoots in that are very, very important. So I can see how, I mean, people think pest control and they think immediately like pesticides, like spraying pesticides and chemicals, which is maybe part of it sometimes, but a big part of it is what we call, what's known in the industry is IPM, which is integrated pest management. And so that's a whole, it's several components, a comprehensive components of taking care of the pest issue beyond just going in and treating the area. It includes inspection, identification, and then a strategic plan to that might include, or definitely include sanitation and monitoring how cleanly the areas are, because we can use a lot of pesticides, but if you don't keep it clean, if you now have good sanitation practices, the pests are gonna keep coming back. Jimmy might have a couple of thoughts on that as well. I actually wanted to piggyback on what has been said so far. One of the interesting things about this post-COVID era that we're experiencing is a lot of the restaurants that were previously closed down are coming back online right now, but they're not up to full capacity like they were before. So one of the things that we're seeing related to trash cans and garbage shoots is that we're starting to see a bunch of outbreaks around these areas and we're asking the owners and the staff, what has changed in behavior? What are you having less trash service than you were before? Is your trash being in your restaurant longer? And they keep telling us, no, no, no, everything's the exact same. But then when we were talking to the workers who are doing the job, we're finding that because there's not as many customers, the trash cans are only making it quarter-cool. And so they're taking the trash cans and consolidating them by putting all of that into one trash can instead. And they're leaving the liners in the old trash cans and they're taking the trash out every day and saying everything's the same. But the thing that they're not realizing is by leaving those old bags and liners in, there's juices flashing at the bottom and it is creating this condition for significant amount of flies and fruit fly outbreaks and roach outbreaks. So this post-COVID, one of the things we've had to be teaching a lot of our restaurants is that you can't just try to save money by using your garbage bags longer by consolidating garbage that that's actually creating a condition for some of the outbreaks. So it's right along with the same stuff that you guys have been talking about. That's exactly right. We have, as you know, I am a partner in restaurants and we have what we call is the lead facilities person and that facilities person, they have a checklist of all the things that they have to check and what they're looking for is like you said, they're looking for signs and evidence of some kind of a bug. And what we wanna do is, you know, suggest maybe that restaurants also work closely with businesses like Island and Cleaners and Kilauea Pes and become their partners together so that they can figure out a strategy to eliminate the pest control, the pest situation. A checklist is always good. Also having them, you know, look around and see for any kinds of cracks and holes because that's the way that those pests get into the buildings, right? So yes, absolutely. So you talked a little bit about green and I always question the people that come to my house because, you know, I have a pet and we don't want any kind of chemicals. And we talked about green. Mafi, do you wanna talk about your green solution? So we use something called SC30 and what that is, it's a degreaser and what it does is it's biodegradable so what we do is as we clean the dumpsters, we're able to take the dirty water off property. And we actually have permits to go and dump the wastewater to the city and county wastewater facility. And so that's the one thing that we do to ensure that the oceans stay clean and everything stays clean and green. Thank you, thank you. Now, one of the other topics that we do wanna talk about is also about how to train our employees and how to educate them. Maybe, Jimmy, you can touch a little bit about that, how we can get our businesses, our restaurant owners and business owners to partner with Kilauea and Island Binh Cleaners to be sure that there's a holistic service that they're taking care of all of these issues that could come up. Yeah, great, that's exactly like, so really the holistic that we're looking for has a lot to do with sanitation practices and I know it's expensive to be having kitchens clean, bringing in professional cleaners. I know that can be a big expense, especially now with authorizing. So some of the stuff that we try to teach restaurant owners is there are specific areas that have the most attraction to pest outbreak. So things like the drains. I was just in a restaurant yesterday where the drains where they did a great job cleaning the floors, but then they never finished pushing it down the drain or scooped it out of the drain and so it just leaves this significant food source in these drain areas. And then what's really common is it increases your chance of rodent because the rodents can smell that rotting material from a long ways away. And so they're drawn into your restaurants at night and increases your chance of cockroach outbreaks. You're providing this great nesting and resource for them. So teaching people staff just to take that extra five minutes and make sure the drains are properly cleaned out can make a huge difference on how much, what kind of pest you're seeing in your restaurant. Very good point. Now, let's talk about the rodent bait stations outside. I've seen them especially by trash bins and on the outsides of buildings. I live in an older area. Our area was built in 1942. So I've got that stone wall around me and I do have a bait in the backyard that killer wear puts out there. So bait stations, are they effective? Oh, definitely. Bait stations are incredibly effective. The key with the bait stations is really identifying where those sources are, where they're coming from. If it's the type of rodent that you're experienced that's coming in and out as well. And then also making sure you're minimizing the competing food sources. So if you have a rodent bait station, but at the same time you leave stuff out in your sink overnight, it's gonna be a competing food source and they're less likely to go to your rodent bait stations. But if things are put away properly and the only source attracting them is a rodent bait station that's on the outside of your property, it's actually gonna draw them outside of your property instead of bringing them into your kitchen. Very good, very good. So this question is now from Mafi because Mafi, I just wanna talk about the bin area. You take care of the trash bin itself but what about the area? It's normally like a concrete, three-sided, I don't know what you call it, area. So it's called a trash enclosure. And so what we do is we pressure watch the trash enclosures. And, you know, because what happens when people take, especially for these places that have a lot of grease, what they do is they throw the trash in but then sometimes the bags rip. And so what we do is we like to maintain the trash enclosure outside, which also is another way of preventing the pets from hitting. Yeah, I didn't even know that you did also the wood cleaning. So can you do that? Kitchen exhaust. I didn't know you'd do that. Yes, we do kitchen exhaust clean as well. So that would be. And so the reason why kitchen exhaust is important, of course, is for fire prevention as well, so. Yeah, definitely. Yes, well, let's talk about how often, guys, because to me, a schedule preventative, the way I have it here at my home and I have it in our restaurants, it's scheduled and automatically, people are gonna come out and take care of that for me because I feel in the long run, it's gonna, I'm gonna avoid any kind of large infestations and which is gonna then save me money by doing a schedule preventative. How frequently do you feel that someone should clean up, have their bins cleaned and their areas cleaned, Murphy? So for the trash bins, we usually clean them once a month and then usually for those dumpster cleanings, there's some people that have monthly cleanings, but I think it might be a little overkill, but we do every quarter for the dumpsters as well. Very good. Thank you. And the question is for Taylor Taylor, for Kilauea, I don't know how often you folks come out to the house, the gals call me and I just like, yes, definitely I want the service, but how often should you be going to either, a business, a residence, or even a restaurant? Yeah, great question. So what I like to call our services is prescription pest control service. So we're catering it to the location, the customer or the business we're working with. And so especially in restaurants situation, commercial situation, we're gonna go do a walk-through, see what the situation is, how big the property is, what's going on, and we'll build out a custom treatment plan for you. With that said, usually for homes like your house, Cheryl, it's gonna be either a bi-monthly or a quarterly service, so every two months or every three months, and then we do a guarantee. So if you see any bugs or pests in between those regular services, we'll come out for a free interior service to take care of you any time for free, right? Now for commercial and restaurants, it's gonna be more frequent than that, of course, because there's a lot more pest pressure, a lot more, you know, there's food and there's, and you gotta be on top of it a little bit more because one roach can be one bad yell per view and that could be a big problem for a business, right? So you're looking at at least monthly, usually for a restaurant, but depending on the restaurant, you know, we might even be there, you know, every week or every two weeks. It just kind of depends on how big and what's going on. And especially the size of the commercial kitchen as well, so. Yeah, I wanted to say something about that as well because I know as a restaurant owners, people have questions on what they should actually expect of their pest control company. So whether it's Kilauea or Oregon or whoever you're using, one of the most important parts for restaurant is actually the inspection, like making sure that your technician is going through and spending five to 10 minutes with a flashlight, looking in cracks and crevices for insects in problem areas because if they're not doing this, if they're just doing a treatment and leaving the building, they're gonna miss an outbreak right when it happens and then you're really gonna regret that. So as an owner of a restaurant, you should be encouraging or expecting, asking them about their inspections and whether it's on camera or you're there in person, you should see them actively using a flashlight to look for an insect. It's like Taylor was talking about, if you see one roach, it might be a bad review, but if you're seeing one roach, there's a hundred in the walls you don't. So that inspection is key to preventative maintenance in restaurants. Jimmy, that's exactly, exactly true. I've been told if you see one, there's many in the back of that wall, so you have to treat it. So let's talk about how we train our employees. As I mentioned at my locations, we do have a facilities lead and that person is the person that everybody writes down and jots down if they see something that doesn't belong a bug and they can report it to somebody. So how do you train your employees to be on the lookout for these, what a warning sign? Well, that's a great question. So I really like that question because we're always trying to encourage restaurants because communication is the biggest factor in controlling pets. So some of the things that restaurants we work with do are keep an internal log, like in their office or somewhere, somewhere discreet so that a health inspector is not gonna see it hanging on the walls, for example. But as employees identify something, it should be immediately reported, passed on, communicated logs somewhere. And then as a pest control company, it's really nice when something like that has happened so that it doesn't matter who's on shift, even if the manager doesn't know managers have a lot to do. It's hard to keep track of everything that we can go and look and see where activity happened, what type of activity was seen. It's hard to train everybody, especially in the restaurant staff. So that's another thing that you should also expect out of your pest control company is that when they're on site, they should be asking the employees what they saw, where they saw it. And not just one or two employees but asking as many as possible because people don't always communicate with each other when they see that stuff. So on both sides, it's one, trying to train your staff but also trying to train your pest control technician whoever you have. Very good. And Mafi, what is some of the tips that you would suggest to a business owner to instruct and educate their employees on the bin cleaning? Well, it's kind of like what Jimmy was saying. It's all about maintenance. You have to ensure that it is proper communication and it's proper discussing from the top down. And it's always harder because it's almost like the telephone game. As you're communicating it to your managers, your managers are communicating it down to their employees. Sometimes it's somewhere it gets lost in translation but continuing to educate them, continuing to explain to them the importance of the maintenance is how you could prevent all this from happening. I mean, there's pests everywhere. I mean, there's smell, bad smells everywhere. And all we're just trying to do is just to maintain it and preventing from growing bigger than what it is. And so that's kind of where we're at. That's a good place for you to live in, try those, right? I mean, I know that, you know, our islands and like I said, even at my home, this rock wall of mine, that's where they breed, right? So that's what can I do, it's a stone wall. So guys, we have five. Oh, sorry about that, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I was gonna do that. I was gonna do that. I want Jimmy, I want everyone to have, you know, a few minutes to wrap it up because we've got five more minutes before we wrap up this show. The 30 minutes always goes by really quickly. So Jimmy, let me give you an opportunity to say a few things and wrap it up and then I'll move on to Taylor and then to Monty. Thank you. Well, one of the things that I wanted to emphasize before we left for restaurant owners, and we've talked a lot about sanitation but maintenance and maintenance, but how do we get there? So one of the things I try to encourage restaurant owners to do is think about the function of the space and the equipment they decide to purchase. So if you're chaining out a stove and a stove is a high breakout area of roaches, if you pick a stove that goes all the way to the ground, it's gonna be really hard for your employees to clean under it. But if you pick a stove that has tall legs like a four to six inch gap, then it makes sanitation much easier. So one of the big things we encourage new restaurants or existing restaurants is that when you're changing out equipment or getting new equipment, think about how you're gonna be able to access it for cleaning, how you're gonna be able to access it for fixing it. And that'll make a huge difference on what type of pest you're attracting into your space. Very good point, Jimmy, you hit the nail on the head because even for Mafi, when I see new construction going up all over, you know, the ward area, I see it on Kayamanku, you know, how they actually will then design their trash bin area is critical so that people can get in like island bin cleaners and remove the bins and be able to clean it and put it back quickly, you're right. So there's no obstacle, very good. So Taylor, do you wanna go ahead and say a few words before we close the show? Yes, thank you, Cheryl. Just to piggyback on Jimmy there, Jimmy actually wrote a blog post that we're gonna post to our website tonight and tomorrow or tomorrow about exactly that. How to strategically look when you're buying new equipment or you're opening a new restaurant, trying to plan out your space that helpful for cleanliness and sanitation but also which is linked to pest control as well. So look out for that on our website. You can look at our blog section but I just wanna stress the importance of being proactive which I think is the theme of today and being preventative. You know, roaches, German roaches are kind of the most common structural pest in Hawaii that gives people the most headaches whether at homes or in a restaurant or anywhere. And it's because they're really hard to get rid of once you have them and they multiply so fast. One German roach, their egg sack, it's called an Uthaka about the size of a pill it'll have about 40 roaches in it, 20 male, 20 female and they'll lay eggs very quickly afterwards. And like Jimmy said earlier, they're mostly in the wall voids and in places where you can't get to. So once they've already established this colony it takes a while to break that down. So being proactive and being on it we'll just avoid a larger headaches later on and maintaining well. So one great thing we just like to do is always provide lots of education. So along the topic of training the staff is use us, use your people, use your pest control company use your bin cleaning company ask them to help train your employees to do inspections if you need it. Awesome, great. All right, so Mofi, can I, do you have a few words that you wanna say? Oh, no, just piggybacking on what everybody else is saying. Just maintenance is the key. Making sure everything is all of today's making sure everything is clean. They all will help to prevent everything. Thank you Mofi, we thank the gentleman and again in closing, pest problems are easier to prevent and treat easier to treat. No, let me take that back. It's easier to treat them ahead of time before they get to be a problem. And if you see one you have many. So normally, we wanna be sure that we do a scheduled maintenance. We wanna take these proactive measures that we discussed today and feel free to contact Hawaii Restaurant Association if you wanna get in touch with Kilauea Pest or island bin cleaners, our members here. And if anyone's interested in hearing more, email me at infoat for what you restaurant.org. And again, Hawaii Restaurant Association is the voice of Hawaii's restaurants and food service industry. Thank you gentlemen for joining me today. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.