How Often Should Your Commercial Kitchen Be Professionally Cleaned?

How Often Should Your Commercial Kitchen Be Professionally Cleaned?The average commercial kitchen requires daily cleaning and regular deep cleaning, as often as once a week. There are no excuses when it comes to keeping a clean commercial kitchen, in fact unsanitary kitchens are at risk for being shut down and heavily fined.

A dirty kitchen presents a big risk to your customers, who could fall ill from foodborne illnesses due to kitchen sanitation issues. A dirty kitchen is also at a greater risk of fire. By hiring a professional cleaning service for your commercial kitchen, you greatly reduce the risk for all of the above. Plus, we can work around your busy schedule so that cleaning doesn’t interfere with your hours of operation.

How often you hire a professional cleaning service is up to you, as each restaurant has a different method for tackling kitchen cleanliness. Some kitchens tear everything done and clean top to bottom more than once a day. Other kitchens let things get out of hand and as a result, often end up with steep fines and even the looming possibility of having to shut down shop.

Some restaurants opt for professional cleaning just a few times per year to prepare for insurance and health inspections or to limit the risk of kitchen fires. These cleanings are extremely important leading up to inspections performed by the National Fire Protection Association and the Federal Food and Drug Administration.

We can provide quarterly, monthly or even weekly cleaning services, providing the deep clean your commercial kitchen needs to stay safe and within legal parameters.

What Do Professional Kitchen Cleaning Services Include?

There are certain cleaning methods only a professional service should provide to deep clean commercial kitchens. For instance, pressure washers are often used to clean and sanitize kitchens, effectively removing built-up dirt and grime from every surface and corner.

Professional commercial kitchen cleaning offers a wide variety of services you can take advantage of, including:

-Emptying and cleaning out grease traps (a huge fire hazard when left ignored).

-Deep cleaning and removing grease from kitchen hoods and exhaust fans (yet another potential fire hazard).

-Deep cleaning floor mats and flooring surfaces

-Deep cleaning walls, ceilings and floors

-Deep cleaning appliances and all kitchen equipment

-Replacing filters as needed

-Refilling and replacing soap and chemical dispensers

-Cleaning and disinfecting sinks, countertops and other work surfaces

What About Kitchen Exhaust Systems?

How often do kitchen exhaust systems need to be cleaned?

This is a common question with more than one answer. In order to be considered technically “clean,” exhaust systems must be cleaned down to bare metal. If cleaning is neglected for a period of time, it might take several cleanings in order to get it back down to bare metal.

The NFPA-96 section 11.6.2 reads: “Hoods, grease removal devices, fans, ducts, and other appurtenances shall be cleaned to remove combustible contaminants prior to surfaces becoming heavily contaminated with grease or oily sludge.”

The owner of the establishment is responsible for the cleanliness of the kitchen exhaust system unless otherwise specified in a contract, in which case the management company or other party might be in charge of this task.

Kitchen exhaust systems should be cleaned as frequently as once a month for high-volume fuel cooking operations, and once a year for low-volume cooking operations—think camps, churches and seasonal businesses. 24-hour cooking operations should have their kitchen exhaust system cleaned quarterly, and moderate-volume cooking operations should have it cleaned semiannually.

You can determine if a kitchen exhaust system requires cleaning by simply looking at it. If you notice any grease building up on surfaces, it likely needs to be cleaned. The more you keep up with this important task, the less work it’ll require each time to get it cleaned to standards. There is also a tool known as The Grease Gauge, developed by IKECA, which can measure the fuel accumulation on a surface and ultimately determine how clean surfaces are.

The Most Neglected Parts Of Commercial Kitchens

There are certain parts of commercial kitchens that are never cleaned enough and tend to be coated in the most germs and bacteria. These areas include:

-The walls

-Soda fountain nozzles

-Meat slicers

-Fridge coils

-Outdoor garbage

-Ice machine

-Fans and lighting

-Under and behind kitchen equipment

Tidy Team is here to help you avoid the most common kitchen cleaning mistakes, such as exposing food to harsh chemicals, or not cleaning the most neglected spaces. Our first-class professional commercial cleaning services are in line with industry standards for commercial kitchens. Contact us today for a free quote!