Food & Meal Delivery Cart Maintenance Tips

Room service has become the gold standard for many hospitals, and heated serving carts, in particular, has made a big impact on its success. Heated serving carts help ensure food is kept at proper temperatures and delivered as quickly as possible. Ensure your serving carts are working at their top performance with these check points.

Daily Food Delivery Cart Maintenance & Cleaning

Keeping your meal delivery carts well-maintained begins at the end of each day. Here are several maintenance tips to incorporate into your daily routine that will keep your food cart working as it should.

Daily Maintenance Tasks

Wipe down your carts at the end of a shift or at the end of the service day to remove spills and debris. Use a food-safe sanitizer as well to ensure the cart is clean and sanitary for the next use.

As-Needed Maintenance Tasks 

There are a few maintenance and cleaning tasks that will need to be done periodically or as needed to keep your cart looking and performing great. Keep in mind that your OEM may recommend slightly different maintenance and cleaning tasks, so be sure to reference your user’s manual for guidance.

Make sure to:

• Remove any racks and clean them
• Wipe down exterior with a clean cloth and water and a mild detergent if needed
• Clean stainless steel surfaces with a non-chlorine cleaner and a soft cloth along grain lines
• Wipe down bumpers and any vinyl surfaces

There are a number of steps that can be taken to ensure hospital meals are served at the proper temperatures.

Heated and Refrigerated Food Cart Maintenance

Meal delivery carts that are heated, refrigerated or allow for both let you serve freshly-prepared food at its intended temperature. Maintaining these types of food carts is important to ensure that food remains at the proper temperature while being transported.

For maintaining heated or refrigerated carts, make sure to:

• Have thermostats, timers and blowers regularly checked to confirm they’re functioning properly
• Power down unit prior to cleaning or conducting light maintenance
• Check door gaskets to make sure they’re intact and not damaged
• Have docking stations inspected
• Have condenser and evaporator coils cleaned and inspected to ensure proper air flow

Caster and Door Maintenance

Hospitals endorse a quiet, relaxing environment for patients to rest and recover, yet squeaking or rattling serving carts can create a disturbance. In addition, carts with steering and vibration issues run the risk of spilling trays in transit and increase order-to-delivery time. For these reasons, it’s important to promptly replace problematic casters to stay ahead of these issues.

To maintain your casters, make sure to:

• Check for any debris that’s gotten caught within casters
• Lubricate casters every six months or as your OEM recommends
• Check for excessive wear and tear and have replaced as necessary

In addition to maintaining casters for a smooth transport, make sure your doors, hinges and latches are operating as they should be. When doors don’t close properly, they can let in air and affect the temperature within the cart. For heated and refrigerated meal delivery carts, loose latches and cracked gaskets make maintaining consistent air temperatures in the unit virtually impossible.

To maintain your food cart’s doors, make sure to:

• Wipe down door hinges and latches to ensure they’re free of debris
• Inspect door gasket for excessive wear or cracks and replace as needed
• Lubricate hinges so they can open and close with ease
• When needed, remove doors if possible and thoroughly clean per OEM’s instructions

Don’t let a broken door, hinge, gasket or latch go unattended. This may result in limited tray access, which can present an ergonomic hazard for hospital personnel and make crowded, difficult-to-navigate hospital corridors even more cumbersome for meal delivery.

Keeping your serving carts working at top performance should not be an afterthought. Simple cart maintenance can make a big difference in patients’ overall perception of a room service program and the hospital as a whole. Presenting self-selected food that is served at the proper temperature and delivered at the promise time is an easy way for hospitals to improve their customer satisfaction rating and the quality of care received at their facility.

Browse our selection of food cart manuals, diagrams and more to ensure your unit is properly maintained with real OEM parts.