Does restaurant cleaning include hood cleaning? Who cleans what in the kitchen

No, not the inside of the hood. Our restaurant cleaning page draws the line: “We clean the facility: degreased floors, hood-adjacent walls and stainless exteriors, drains, dining room, and restrooms.” Hood and duct interiors are “fire-code work (NFPA 96) that stays with your certified hood-cleaning contractor,” and food-contact surfaces “stay with your kitchen team under your food-safety plan.”

One kitchen, three crews

A commercial kitchen has three cleaning lanes, whether or not anyone has written them down. Each covers its own part of the room, under its own rulebook, on its own clock:

• The hood contractor. The inside of the hood and the exhaust ducts, under NFPA 96, the National Fire Protection Association’s standard for commercial cooking ventilation.
• Your kitchen team. Food-contact surfaces and equipment interiors, from prep tables and cutting boards to the inside of the fryer, under your food-safety plan. Much of this lane runs during service.
• The cleaning company. The facility: floors, walls, drains, equipment exteriors, the dining room and the restrooms, on a written scope, after close.

The split isn’t arbitrary. The FDA’s Food Code, the model state and local regulators use to write their own food rules, runs a kitchen on two clocks. Food-contact surfaces used with foods that need time and temperature control are cleaned “throughout the day at least every four hours,” with listed exceptions, and whenever work switches from raw food to ready-to-eat (2026 edition, § 4-602.11). Spills aside, the facility is cleaned “during periods when the least amount of food is exposed such as after closing” (§ 6-501.12). One clock runs during service; the other starts when it ends. Your inspector enforces your own jurisdiction’s version.

Equipment is where two lanes meet. Our commercial kitchen cleaning page splits it into outside and inside: “Equipment exteriors — range sides, fryer cabinets, reach-in doors and handles — degreased; interiors and food-contact surfaces stay with your kitchen team.” The Food Code gives those nonfood-contact surfaces a section of their own, too (§ 4-602.13).

What the overnight crew covers, line by line

Here is the facility lane as our restaurant cleaning page publishes it:

• “Kitchen floor degreasing: line, prep, and dish-pit floors, including equipment edges and reachable under-equipment zones”
• “Hood-adjacent walls, shelving exteriors, and stainless wiped down — hood and duct interiors stay with your certified hood contractor”
• “Floor drains scrubbed, flushed, and deodorized on a set cadence”
• “Bar floors and mats degreased, back-bar exteriors wiped”
• “Dining room: floors, table bases and chair rails, entry glass, host stand”
• “Restrooms sanitized and restocked every visit — the room guests judge your kitchen by”

Our commercial kitchen cleaning page adds the wall behind the line: “Walls, doors, and FRP panels behind prep and cook lines degreased to bare surface.” Settle one word on site: walk the line together and agree which equipment can be pulled out, so “reachable” means the same thing to everyone. Why guests read the restroom as a report on the kitchen is its own story, told in how customers judge a business by its cleanliness.

Where grease hides from a closing crew

Grease doesn’t stay where it’s made. The restaurant cleaning page describes the spread: “Grease film spreads from the line to everything near it — walls, shelving, the stainless around the hood — and once it bonds, a mop just moves it around.” In Florida, our home market, the commercial kitchen page names where inspectors find it: “DBPR inspectors write up what mop water never reaches: grease on walls and ceiling tiles, buildup under equipment, grout gone black along the cook line.” One honest gap: ceiling tiles are in that line but in neither page’s scope list; raise them at the walkthrough.

DBPR is Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation; state law gives restaurant inspections to its Division of Hotels and Restaurants, on a risk-based schedule of one to four routine inspections a year (sections 509.013 and 509.032, Florida Statutes). Elsewhere, a state or local agency inspects under its own food rules.

Why the closing crew shouldn’t also degrease

The restaurant cleaning page says it in one sentence: “Your closing crew at 1 a.m. is there to close the kitchen, not to degrease it — deep floor work needs its own crew and its own window.” Closing has its own list: product put away, the line broken down, food-contact surfaces cleaned and sanitized under your plan. Degreasing is different work, which the commercial kitchen page calls “trade work: quarry tile, FRP panels, and equipment exteriors need the right chemistry and dwell time, not a stronger-smelling mop bucket.” Dwell time is the step a tired closer skips; a crew that starts after lock-up, once your team has finished its own lane, can let the degreaser sit.

How often each lane runs

Only one of the three calendars is ours to quote. The restaurant cleaning page’s timing answer reads: “Crews arrive after your closing team locks up and finish before morning prep walks in — nightly, or a heavier degrease a few nights a week, set at the walkthrough.” For the hood, we won’t name an interval; that belongs to NFPA 96, your hood contractor and your fire inspector. For food-contact surfaces, the clock runs during service, under your plan and your local code, which is why that lane can’t move to an overnight crew: much of it happens while you’re cooking.

What dated photos can and can’t do

The restaurant cleaning page is blunt about the stakes: “One bad health-inspection visit is public record — and inspectors look exactly where a tired closing crew stops: under equipment, behind the line, into the drains.” What a facility crew can add is a record. The commercial kitchen page lists “CleanCheck photo proof on eligible completed visits — dated images for your DBPR inspection file.” Those images document the facility crew’s own visit. They aren’t an inspection result, they say nothing about the hood or your food-contact surfaces, and nobody can honestly promise you a score. File them beside your hood contractor’s records and your own food-safety logs.

Put the three lanes in writing

A kitchen with three crews and no document has gaps nobody owns. Before the first night, write down:

1. The hood contractor’s lane: hood and exhaust-duct interiors, with the contractor’s name and number on file.
2. The kitchen team’s lane: food-contact surfaces and equipment interiors, and what must be finished before the facility crew arrives.
3. The facility lane: the scope lines quoted above, the nights for the heavier degrease, and the drain schedule.
4. The orphans: ceiling tiles, grease traps, anything under or behind equipment that doesn’t move. Give each an owner, even if the answer is that it sits outside this contract.
5. The mop sink: the model Food Code bars cleaning maintenance tools or dumping mop water in food-prep sinks, handwashing sinks or warewashing equipment (§ 6-501.15), so show the crew the service sink.

Then bring the walkthrough inputs; the restaurant cleaning page lists them: “kitchen size, floor types, drain count, dining-room square footage, and cadence set the price.” What happens on that visit is in what happens during a commercial cleaning walkthrough, and who holds the Safety Data Sheets and the spill response is in whether hiring a cleaning company makes your workplace OSHA compliant.

What we clean, and what we won’t claim

What we clean is the facility lane quoted above, on the schedule our restaurant cleaning page publishes, “Overnight scheduling between close and morning prep,” and with the paperwork it commits to: “You get the quote in writing, a COI within 2 business hours of asking, and no payment at booking.”

What we won’t claim: that we clean hood or duct interiors, sanitize food-contact surfaces, clean equipment interiors or service grease traps, work none of our pages offers. We won’t quote a hood-cleaning interval, promise an inspection score or outcome, or present a CleanCheck photo as more than a record of our own visit. The code and statute references here are general information, not legal, fire-code or food-safety advice; the versions your inspectors enforce are the ones that apply.

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