If you own or operate a commercial kitchen of any size, you know how absolutely critical proper maintenance of your equipment and building can be. Practically every item in a kitchen can be dangerous if it is handled incorrectly or is in disrepair, including the vent systems that are meant to remove harmful things from your air. Without proper maintenance by commercial hood cleaners, your kitchen’s vents can be dangerous to your staff, your customers, and your bank account.

Fire & Health Risks

Your kitchen vent hoods and HVAC systems are designed to vent harmful smoke and chemicals away from the kitchen, but uncleaned vent systems can be dangerous. Hiring commercial hood cleaners regularly to clean and maintain your HVAC system can keep your vents free of ash, oils, grease, and other debris. These materials can build up, trap heat, and then ignite in your vents, causing a fire.

Your vent systems are carrying these dangers away from your kitchen for a reason beyond their fire risk. Breathing in traces of these carcinogens can be a health risk as well, triggering minor things, like allergies, to long-term damages, like lung cancer. Regular maintenance by professional commercial hood cleaners keeps your kitchen a healthy kitchen.

Equipment & Insurance Benefits

Many business owners try to skip out on maintenance to save a few bucks, but there are so many reasons not to that it’s clearly in your best interest to keep up! This is usually a homeowner-type mentality: If it’s your property and you know a hazard is there, you can avoid it instead of paying for it to be fixed. An exposed tree root next to your sidewalk, for example. But that mindset does not translate properly to a business setting. That same tree root in a business setting could cause a much more serious accident. That’s why commercial hood cleaners are so important.

Firstly, bringing in commercial hood cleaners for maintenance helps keep your equipment running as efficiently as possible, reducing your energy costs. Any full-time kitchen knows that those add up. This maintenance will also keep your vents clear, preventing buildup of debris that can eat away and damage your vents. It’s always cheaper to pay the upkeep costs of your equipment than to buy new ones before you need to.

Building on that idea, there are significant financial downsides to any accident in a commercial kitchen. The homeowner with the tree root doesn’t need to shut down or limit his access to his home to remove the tree root if there was an accident, but the business owner would have an insurance investigation, liability claims (or WCB if it was an employee), plus repair downtime. Any lost time to a commercial kitchen is incredibly expensive. A fire in your HVAC system will cause, in addition to your physical damages, days of downtime where your kitchen is fully closed for inspections, repairs, and smoke treatment, and on top of all that, there will be increased insurance premiums later. Commercial hood cleaners are highly recommended to avoid these destructive situations. You’ll likely find that your lost future income far outweighs the cost of the damaged property.

Another financial benefit? Many insurance agencies have discounts for keeping up proper maintenance schedules. Check in with your insurance agent, but you might be surprised at the savings you’ll see over the year just by hiring commercial hood cleaners regularly.

Customer Care & Satisfaction

You want your restaurant to be a place your customers enjoy. That includes keeping the place clean and the food up to perfection. Commercial hood cleaners play an important role in your restaurant’s quality as well. Those harmful carcinogens that are in your vents? Traces of those materials will make their way into your restaurant over time and can cause a lingering smell. Buildups in the hood vent in your kitchen can cause some of this smell to stick to the food that is being prepared as well. Keeping your kitchen vents clean is a crucial part of making sure your kitchen is producing a quality meal that your customers will keep coming back for.