Find articles on kitchen exhaust cleaning, NFPA 96, compliance, fire safety, and commercial kitchen maintenance.
OPERATIONS & EQUIPMENT · SEASONAL PLANNING A steakhouse in Dallas does 40 percent of its annual catering revenue between the Monday before Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. A hotel banquet kitchen in San Antonio runs holiday parties six nights a week in December. A hospital cafeteria in Oklahoma City never
OPERATIONS & REGULATIONS · ENVIROMENTAL COMPLIANCE A hood cleaning crew arrives at 11 pm with a hot-water pressure washer, forty gallons of alkaline degreaser, and a kitchen whose duct holds thirty pounds of grease. Four hours later the duct is bare metal and the crew is gone. The grease didn’t
OPERATIONS & EQUIPMENT · INSURANCE & RISK Your fire marshal walked the kitchen last month and left satisfied. Your service labels are current, your access panels are tagged, your written reports are on file. You’re NFPA 96 compliant. Then your insurance renewal arrives with a loss-control condition requiring quarterly cleaning
OPERATIONS & EQUIPMENT · COMPONENT REFERENCE The filter above your cookline is the first line of defense in your kitchen exhaust system — but which type you have determines what maintenance it needs, how much grease it catches, and how much your exhaust ductwork loads between NFPA 96 service intervals.
OPERATIONS & EQUIPMENT A pollution control unit is the piece of exhaust equipment that removes smoke, grease vapor, and odor from a commercial kitchen’s discharge before it exits the building. If the kitchen sits under residential floors or inside a mall, the PCU is often what makes the operation legal
OPERATIONS & EQUIPMENT A rooftop exhaust fan that stops working shuts the kitchen down. Whether to repair or replace it depends on which component failed, how old the fan is, what the parts and downtime cost, and whether the unit meets current NFPA 96 requirements. Here’s the plain-language decision framework.
OPERATIONS & EQUIPMENT Fifteen years ago, a rooftop grease containment system was a nice-to-have. Today, it’s a lease requirement, an insurance underwriting condition, and a fire-code expectation across most of the Southwest. Here’s what these systems are, why they matter, and who’s responsible for keeping them working. July 28, 2026
OPERATIONS & EQUIPMENT Two hours on a high-volume kitchen is not a full NFPA 96 cleaning. Twelve hours on a single-hood deli is overkill. The right answer depends on the system — and the time the cleaning takes is one of the clearest signals about the quality of the work
