The Importance of Regular Kitchen Hood Cleaning

Regular kitchen hood cleaning is crucial and in some places even required by law depending on what your profession is. If we’re talking about the average home-kitchen type of hood, you don’t have many benefits other than maintaining the hygiene in the one place you prepare all your meals at. But, if you are the owner or the manager of a restaurant, not performing regular hood cleaning can get you in trouble with the local inspection services.

There is a lot more that can be said about this activity and that’s exactly what we’re here to talk about in today’s article. If you aren’t familiar with kitchen hood cleaning or you are wondering how and why it should be done on the regular, today we’ll help you learn. Let’s take a look.

The reasons why commercial kitchen owners avoid this “costly activity”

It’s a costly activity, yes, but is it an unnecessary cost or something that will prevent major issues from happening in your kitchen later on? We know-how business owners think. They want to save every penny no matter what they are sacrificing at the moment. However, more pennies will be spent later on to fix other major issues caused by improperly maintained kitchen hood. The main reasons why they avoid this are the following ones:

• It takes time and effort, and if you don’t have that, you have to pay for service
• It’s not the easiest thing to do, it’s messy and it puts your kitchen into maintenance
• They don’t even know something is wrong with their kitchen hood until it’s too late
• Local inspection services aren’t pressuring them to keep everything in check

As for the benefits of regularly cleaning your kitchen hood, here they are:

Better circulation of air throughout the entire kitchen

Grease slowly builds up in your kitchen as you spend months or years cooking and preparing delicious meals for your customers. After some time this becomes a fire hazard as well as a hygiene-related issue. You shouldn’t have such working circumstances in your restaurant because firstly they are against the standards and you may get a penalty for it, and secondly because you are putting your employees at risk.

When the grease gets removed you will no longer feel that unpleasant smell and your kitchen will have better air circulation. The steam coming out of the kitchen appliances is not regular steam, over time you can check the areas where it touches and you’ll see that everything is oily.

For further information, you can check out https://www.premiergrease.com/hood-cleaning.html

You’ll avoid trouble with the local inspection authorities

Once again, if you want your restaurant to have the reputation every other owner wants, you need to constantly perform maintenance and keep everything in check. If you don’t, your restaurant may be closed by the authorities until you perform the required maintenance. These inspections happen at a random time and we’re not sure how it works in your country but usually, you don’t get notified of it, which is the entire point of this. And, as we said above, you shouldn’t do this just because of the inspection thing, your workers will feel more motivated to work in a clean environment.

Workers will feel more motivated to work in a tidy environment

When the smell of grease slowly builds up in your kitchen, everyone will start being frustrated with the working conditions, and we all know that employees with reduced morale are not as productive as you need them to be. Just like entering a clean and tidy office on a Monday morning feel satisfying, the same thing goes for your cooks.

You will prevent the risk of fire hazards and other material damage

Grease buildup and bad air circulation is a hazardous combo. You can risk the burst of fire and a smoke alert, which are two of the scariest things that can happen in a commercial kitchen. Not only you’ll suffer material damage from that type of catastrophe but both your employees and the guests in your restaurant will panic out completely.

As the owner of the restaurant you are legally obliged and responsible to keep everyone inside safe, so even if something ends up happening which is not your fault but simply the product of irregular maintenance, you’ll be responsible for the damage. Don’t put yourself in such a situation.

Regular maintenance improves longevity

When you maintain all the appliances in your kitchen, they last longer, and you’ll save money in the long run even though it doesn’t look like that at first. Maintenance is costly but replacing things is far more expensive. If you find a maintenance service that you’ll work in the long run, you might even get some sort of a discount.

If you want to check the ducts on your own and clean them regularly on your own, you’ll still need to invest in the right equipment. It’s going to save you money in the long-term but you’ll need the right skill to do it, as well as some free time in your hand. The main issue is a lot of people think they can handle things on their own but once they see how messy it is they forget about doing it on their own and call a professional service instead. Try it and see for yourself.

Conclusion

Maintaining a commercial kitchen is not the easiest task, but it has to be done regularly. Why? We made sure to explain it all in the content above. Although most restaurant owners think of this as an unnecessary cost and try to delay it as much as they possibly can, we strongly advise against it. It’s the wrong approach. Cleaning your kitchen hood should be on a regular schedule and in some cases even a priority. Feel free to check out what we wrote above if you are willing to learn more on this topic.

As always, we’re thankful for the time you took off to read our piece and we hope to see you in the next one.