Dining, clubbing and cleaning

13th of December 2018 Article by Lotte Printz
Dining, clubbing and cleaning

Clubbing can lead to many things. Like starting a cleaning venture. From Malmö in Sweden ECJ correspondent Lotte Printz has this report.

Someone recently told me that when eating out with her family, she always checks the restaurant’s washroom before asking for the menu: “If I know what the lavatories look like, I can most certainly tell you what the restaurant’s kitchen looks like…  and thus whether I want to have my meal there,”
she added.

Generally speaking, the cleaning of many restaurant and nightclub washrooms leaves much to be desired, and this real-life scenario sparked the beginning of a new cleaning venture in Malmö, Sweden. When clubbing, two 20-year-old guys, Marcus Christensson and Simon Knez, had seen a disgusting lavatory too many and decided to take matters into their own hands.

On the spot

Skitrent, in translation “Shitty Cleaning” (pardon my French!), is the name of their business, whose specialism is to clean “on the scene”, ie, while guests are using the facilities.

“Once in a while people queuing get irritated with us, I suppose, but we always talk to them and explain that all we want to do is to make sure the toilets they are about to use are clean. That’s appreciated. Besides, we do the job fast,” Marcus Christensson says talking to Cleannet, trade magazine for the Swedish cleaning industry.

The job they do is perhaps not quite as thorough as normal cleaning, but includes mopping the floor, wiping toilet seats clean with an all-purpose detergent, cleaning mirrors and emptying paper bins.

In the beginning, the two initiators did the cleaning themselves, but after six months in business they have left most of the cleaning to two other people on hourly pay.

Simon Knez does not have much time for the business initiative as he is training full-time to become a nurse. Marcus Christensson studies commercial law part-time and works at check-in at the near-by airport, besides his affairs in Skitrent. He still does some cleaning himself occasionally, but mainly takes care of sales and marketing in Skitrent.

It isn’t an easy job, he admits, even using social media platforms, but the restaurant and nightclub owners are generally positive towards the whole idea when Marcus Christensson gets hold of them.
“They think it’s a cool and great idea, but they obviously ask about the price as well. We are a cheap option,” he says.

Paying the two employees proper wages, thus making them want to stay in the job, is important for the enterprise, however, and then the price paid must cover their workwear, detergents and equipment, but for now the two entrepreneurs do not cash in any pay themselves.

Ambition to expand

While their idea still doesn’t pay in the literal sense of the word, it pays in experience and exercise.
“I always ride my bike when I go cleaning,” Marcus Christensson says. “That’s the most flexible transport solution, but also one of the reasons we would like our customers as close to each other as possible.”

Up till now their main focus has been on attracting customers in Lilla Torg, a square area in the city centre of Malmö filled with restaurants, bars and clubs, and the objective is to cover them all.

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