How do you know if your hood cleaning company is doing a good job?
ANSWER: You don’t.
The simple truth about the hood cleaning industry, is that it is full of companies that are out to rip you off.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at the following photos.
This service was done earlier this month and these photos were taken today. Keep in mind that the service was done by a large company, certified by a kitchen exhaust cleaning association that claims to set higher standards for its members. This is not some fly by night “blow and go Joe”.
Here is the hood. It looks pretty clean, nice clean filters, anyone looking at it would just assume that since the hood looks so clean, the whole system must be clean, right? There is even a “Certificate of Performance” on the hood stating that a complete kitchen exhaust system cleaning was performed.
Just pull one of the filters out, and you can see that the area directly behind them is clean, but there is a lot of buildup on the pipes and up the duct.
This what the duct looks like. Not even touched. The owner of this restaurant assumed he was getting a proper cleaning for a reputable certified company, and it turns out he was getting screwed.
This the top of the duct on the roof. It looks like they at least attempted to clean it. It’s obvious that they gave up after a few minutes and decided to move on to the fan.
Hey, that looks pretty good! Maybe I am not giving these guys enough credit. Lets see what the bowl looks like.
I’m impressed, that is about what I would expect the bowl of a fan to look like a couple of weeks after a proper cleaning. Lets tip the fan over and check the blades.
Ok now see the light brown spots, those are all the areas that the guy cleaned on the service. Not the worst I have seen, but he definitely missed some spots. Now we will take a closer look at the fan blades.
These fan blades are caked with grease and will cause this fan to go out of balance, start shaking, and anyone that has stood under a hood while the fan is shaking knows that the entire hood is going to start shaking. If it doesn’t get handled soon, say goodbye to your fan.
So what should you learn from this? Don’t ever take your hood cleaning companies word for it. Demand that they take photos of the service. It will hold them accountable for their work and give you the piece of mind that the job was done right.
