One of the critical aspects that you, as a restaurant owner, must ponder deeply about when running your business is the cleanliness of your commercial kitchen.
This vital area is where chefs cook the food and servants get the menu they’ll serve. In line with this, it’s also a space where most of your employees stay for a long time. Hence, owners must maintain proper cleanliness and maintenance measures, ensuring everyone’s safety, particularly inside the restaurant. The standard way to do it is by installing grease ducts.
In this article, you can read through its advantages and some helpful tips you can consider when applying access doors or contemplating installing one. But before going further, let’s define grease duct as a fundamental kitchen component first.
What is a Grease Duct?
A grease duct is a tool welded to keep your bustling kitchen from fire breakouts that can occur through hot flammable grease that can ignite construction materials around your kitchen’s ducts and fittings.
Instead, if pertinent, hangers of non-combustible elements should support the ducts and fittings properly, carrying their weight and seismic load. These are three essential benefits of grease ducts:
1. Helps Avoid Developing Fire-Hazard Elements
Grease ducts are crucial to install in your kitchen as they can handle air vulnerable to oil, grease, dust, smoke, odor, and fumes and lead it outside the commercial space. Continuous cooking fills your kitchen with high temperatures that can naturally ignite fire over time.
Therefore, grease ducts are your best weapon in avoiding massive kitchen fires, as they provide an easy and accessible way to clean and maintain your ducts, preventing grease buildup. It can safeguard the establishment from fire hazards while keeping good air quality inside the restaurant, making the ambiance more enticing and customer-friendly.
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2. Ensures the Safety of Food and Customers
Cleanliness is next to safety. It’s essential to cook safely edible food to attract more loyal customers to eat regularly in your restaurant. Grease ducts are one of your best utility companions to ensure proper sanitation in the kitchen.
The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) requires commercial building owners, specifically those running food or restaurant businesses, to regularly clean the kitchen hoods as they can accumulate debris saturation over time.
If you want to ensure cleaning that leaves no spot behind, there are maintenance and cleaning specialists that you can hire to do the job for you meticulously. Make sure to provide grease duct access panels to enter hard-to-reach areas and ensure proper cleansing seamlessly. Furthermore, these handy and innovative solution allows you to reduce detrimental chemical usage for cleaning smoke and grease residue in your exhaust.
3. Maintains a Healthy Work Environment in The Restaurant
Chefs, food servants, and other restaurant staff will probably spend most of their working time inside the kitchen. Thus, as an owner, it’s crucial for you to keep their safety your priority.
Owners investing in your employees’ health and protection guarantees huge ROI for your business as they’re always secured to perform at their best with fewer filed sick leaves.
4. Keep Kitchens Well-Ventilated
Cooking food emits smoke. Hence, your kitchen must have grease ducts that enable regular inflow inside, leading the smoke toward your exhaust. It saves your kitchen area, specifically your employees, from suffocation or other illnesses that can originate from inhaling harmful fumes.
Moreover, poor air condition also affects the quality of the food you’re serving and the ambiance of your restaurant. You want your diner to gain loyal customers by giving them proper ventilation to chit-chat and eat comfortably.
Furthermore, having grease ducts is a wise energy-saving technique. If you can maintain good airflow inside your kitchen, your HVAC system doesn’t have to function extra hard to maintain the quality of airflow indoors. Thus, you can officially say goodbye to high electric bills that are eating up most of your budget.
5. Eliminate Foul Odors
Even though barely seen, food cooking produces grease and grime that have a stinky and unpleasant smell. You must address these issues as quickly as possible to ensure quality delivery of the service your restaurant is striving to serve.
Install grease ducts to get rid of the smelly concerns in an instant easily. If you detect a burning grease scent with the grease duct utility you purchased, it’s a bad sign that the product is dysfunctioning.
Call the store where you bought the item immediately, and ask for a replacement or refund. Now that you’re aware of the advantages that grease ducts deliver, here are some of the tips you should take into account once installed:
Regular Inspections and Cleaning Are a Must
As mentioned, the pathway of hoods and ducts infiltrates with dirty and harmful debris that can affect your food and deteriorate the quality of your kitchen facilities in the long run.
Therefore, you should make it a habit to do routine inspections and clean these components to avert circumstances that will put your business, employees, and customers on the line.
Use Appropriate Restaurant Hood Cleaning Chemicals
To scrutinously tidy your commercial kitchen’s ducts, it’s necessary for you to buy the correct hood cleaning chemicals that can effectively remove grease in fans, blades, grills, filters, floors, and other kitchen equipment.
Check your local jurisdictions and see if there are further regulations regarding the cleaning chemical type, they require restaurant businesses to utilize. Remind your staff to collect the grease, chemicals, and water after cleaning and avoid dumping them into the city’s storm drains to prevent water supply pollution.
Grease Duct’s Vital Kitchen Roles
Your commercial kitchen is an integral part of your restaurant business. Thus, keeping it clean and well-maintained is imperative, as it can directly affect the health and safety of many people customers, and employees.
One way to safeguard the individuals critical in the flourishment of your enterprise has grease ducts that will ensure that your restaurant has good air quality, safe food, and a hearty work environment.
