Find articles on kitchen exhaust cleaning, NFPA 96, compliance, fire safety, and commercial kitchen maintenance.
OPERATIONS & REGULATIONS · SECTION 8.1.1.1 Of every deficiency a fire marshal writes on a commercial kitchen rooftop, a missing hinge kit is the one operators most often haven’t heard of before the citation. It’s a small piece of hardware — a hinge, a cable, a prop — bolted to
COMPLIANCE & REGULATIONS · PRE-OPENING Most of what goes wrong with a kitchen exhaust system over the first five years was decided in the first five months — in the drawings, in the construction punch list, and in the ninety days after the doors opened. An access panel that wasn’t
OPERATIONS & REGULATIONS · FIRE PROTECTION A restaurant operator calls to schedule hood cleaning and asks, “Will you check the Ansul system while you’re up there?” It’s the most common question in the business, and the answer — no, that’s a different vendor, a different license, and a different code
OPERATIONS & REGULATIONS · SECTION 12.6.5 Every hood cleaning quote in the Southwest promises the same three words: cleaned to bare metal. It’s the phrase fire marshals listen for, the phrase insurance adjusters look for on the written report, and the phrase NFPA 96 uses to define what a compliant
OPERATIONS & REGULATIONS · FIRE RESPONSE The fire is out. The fire department has left. The kitchen is a mess and the phone is ringing with reservations you can’t honor. The question every operator asks in that moment is “how fast can we reopen?” — and the honest answer is
COMPLIANCE & REGULATIONS · HEALTHCARE VERTICAL Hospital foodservice operations run at a scale, cadence, and complexity that changes the NFPA 96 compliance equation. Multiple kitchens, contracted vendors, 24-hour patient meal service, Joint Commission oversight, and the highest fire-risk category under Table 12.4 combine into a compliance environment that differs meaningfully
COMPLIANCE & REGULATIONS · FIRE DATA The economic case for NFPA 96 compliance doesn’t rest on assumption. Decades of NFPA-published structure fire data show consistent patterns in when, where, why, and how commercial kitchen fires happen. Understanding the patterns helps operators, insurance underwriters, and corporate compliance leads make cleaning cadence
COMPLIANCE & REGULATIONS · FOR RESTAURANT GROUPS & CORPORATE COMPLIANCE LEADS Managing NFPA 96 compliance across one kitchen is straightforward. Managing it across 20 kitchens in five states is a different job — one that catches corporate compliance leads at insurance renewal, at claim response, and at fire marshal reinspection.
COMPLIANCE & REGULATIONS Most operators use “hood inspection” and “hood cleaning” interchangeably. NFPA 96 doesn’t. The 2024 Edition treats them as two separate requirements — one sets the schedule, the other is triggered by what the schedule uncovers. Understanding the difference is the difference between paying for the service you
COMPLIANCE & REGULATIONS · REGIONAL REFERENCE NFPA 96 is a national standard, but nobody enforces it nationally. Each state adopts NFPA 96 through its own fire code, and every local fire marshal enforces the standard as adopted in their jurisdiction. For restaurant groups running kitchens across multiple Southwest states, understanding
COMPLIANCE & REGULATIONS Access panels are the most under-discussed compliance failure in commercial kitchen exhaust cleaning. A vendor can technically clean “everything accessible” and still leave the operator with a system that fails fire marshal inspection — because NFPA 96 requires the operator to make the entire exhaust system accessible
COMPLIANCE & REGULATIONS · FIRE PREVENTION A commercial kitchen fire almost never begins the way most operators picture it. It starts small, hides in a place nobody can see, and travels through the exhaust system before anyone in the kitchen knows the flames have moved past the cookline. Here’s how
