If you find a warehouse for lease and decide to use it to keep food products in safekeeping before they are to be shipped to customers, you will want to do your best in protecting this inventory from pests. It is a bit difficult to keep rodents, birds, and insects away from food in a warehouse setting, but with a few precautionary steps your products will remain untouched and in sanitary condition for selling. Here are some steps to take when setting up your warehouse to keep pests out of the enclosed area.

Set Up Platforms

Place several pallets in your warehouse before you start bringing in inventory to store. Place them in the center portion of the unit, away from shadowed corners or walls, as this area will be more lit up and at less risk of a pest infestation. Placing boxes or drums of food on top of the pallets will keep crawling rodents and insects from getting into the containers as easily. Consider stacking a few pallets so the product is lifted from the ground by several inches.

Label Your Product

When bringing food items into storage, it is important to label them with the date they were placed inside the warehouse. This will help ensure that the products brought in first will be moved out first, alleviating a product from sitting around for an excessive amount of time. The longer a product sits, the more at risk it is for a pest problem, as the food may spoil, become more intense with odor, or prone to a break-in if a pest works at getting in a bit each day. Keep a running list of how many packages are in your warehouse and which ones are the first to be shipped.

Cover Entryways

Use plastic stripping to keep birds and rodents from coming into your warehouse. This material is the same covering used when you go into an automatic car wash. It can be easily hung from the top of your dock door to keep pests from getting inside. 

Take a walk around the exterior of your warehouse before bringing in inventory. If there are any large cracks or crevices where pests can squeeze their way in, alert your landlord or rental service to see if they could send over a maintenance worker to seal the areas. If they do not have someone available, find out if it would be alright to use caulking to repair the areas yourself.