Like any business, restaurants try to avoid unnecessary costs. Decorating the dining areas improves how the restaurant appears to your customers, while decorating the kitchen with rubber floor mats may seem pointless. If you are a restaurant owner, you might wonder why kitchen floor mats are often made of rubber. You may wonder whether a nitrile rubber mat is any different from any other kitchen floor mat. Perhaps, you wonder if you should invest in kitchen floor mats at all. However, a rubber mat is more than a mere decoration for the kitchen. A kitchen floor mat lowers fatigue, increases employee safety, and keeps spills off the kitchen floor.

Rubber floor mats also provide an anti-slip surface that improves safety for employees in the kitchen. Restaurant employees move around the kitchen frequently, with kitchen staff carrying ingredients and utensils to food prep areas while servers enter and exit with customers’ orders. Water and other liquids spill on the floor throughout the day, putting employees at risk of slipping and falling. Fortunately, the surface of a rubber mat helps to reduce slip-and-fall accidents. Rubber naturally resists water, allowing spilled water to be cleaned up more easily. Rubber also has a high coefficient of friction. As a result, people have increased foot traction when walking on a kitchen floor mat than on a bare kitchen floor, making them less likely to slip and fall on spilled liquids. By using kitchen floor mats, restaurant owners can help to minimize the hazards of slippery floors in their kitchens.

In addition to their anti-slip surface, many kitchen floor mats have large drainage holes that trap spilled water. These holes allow spills to drain off the top of the mat, providing a relatively dry surface for people to walk on, while also keeping spilled liquids from flowing across the floor.  Since the mat keeps both its top surface and the surrounding floor safe to walk on, drainage mats further reduce kitchen employees’ risk of slipping and falling. Some drainage mats have holes large enough to contain solid debris and keep it off the floor as well.

Kitchens work with a variety of liquids, and spilled cooking oil causes just as much of a slip hazard as spilled water. Rubber, vinyl, and other polymers tend to disintegrate when they come into contact with oil or grease, so many types of matting do not handle oil spills very well. Fortunately, some kitchen floor mats are made from a special type of rubber called nitrile rubber. Nitrile rubber is resistant to grease and oil, just as other types of rubber are resistant to water. As a result, oil spills are easier to clean up on a nitrile rubber mat than on vinyl flooring or other types of rubber matting. Just as other rubber floor mats protect employees against slipping on spilled water, a nitrile rubber mat also protects employees from slipping on spilled oil. A nitrile rubber mat is particularly useful in kitchens where grease splatters frequently, such as areas where deep-fried or pan-fried dishes are prepared.

Rubber floor mats provide a considerable level of utility for kitchen employees. They are comfortable for employees to stand on and protect them from falling on slippery floors. A kitchen depends on the health of its employees as much as the satisfaction of its customers. By using kitchen floor mats, owners can look out for their employees, and in turn, for the kitchen as a whole.

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