A commercial exhaust hood sits between the kitchen and the exhaust duct, and it collects the grease that every fryer, grill and griddle throws into the air. Left alone, that film thickens, drips and narrows the airflow. A cleaning checklist is what turns this job from a scramble before the health inspector arrives into a routine the crew can actually repeat. Below is a checklist structure that kitchen managers can adapt, plus the equipment questions to settle before writing it.
Start with the hood assembly, not the whole kitchen
Write the checklist around the parts grease actually reaches. For most hoods that means the outer canopy, the filters, the grease trough or collection cup, the plenum behind the filters, the fan housing and the first section of duct beyond the hood. Each item should say who is responsible and how often, because the surfaces foul at different speeds.
- Filters: remove, clean or swap, log the date. On a busy line this is a weekly or even shorter interval.
- Canopy interior and outer surfaces: wipe down after service, deeper clean on a set day each week.
- Grease trough and collection points: empty and wash at every filter cleaning.
- Plenum and fan housing: inspect monthly, clean when visible buildup appears.
- Duct access panel: inspect for coating on the walls and note the condition, not just the date.
- Stovetop and equipment directly under the hood: clean at the end of each service.
Record what "clean" means, or the checklist becomes paperwork
A line item that says "clean hood" gets signed off without being done. Replace it with observable conditions: no visible grease film on the filters, no standing grease in the trough, no dripping at the hood edges, airflow unchanged from the previous check. Two people with the same checklist should reach the same conclusion.
Add a short note field for what was found, not only what was done. A technician who writes "heavy coating on the north side of the plenum" gives the next cleaner a starting point, and a stack of those notes tells you whether the current frequency is realistic.
Record the evidence you will need later
Inspectors and insurers ask two questions: how often is the hood cleaned, and who did it. Add a column for the name of the person and one for the contractor's invoice or report reference when the task falls outside your crew. Date, initials and a reference number on one line are enough; a checklist that needs three forms to prove one task was done will not survive a busy Friday.
Match the method to the grease, and the equipment to the method
Cold water and detergent struggle with polymerised grease — the hard, sticky layer that has been heated repeatedly. Heat does most of that work. Hot steam softens and lifts the film, so scrubbing time drops and the surface comes back to metal. This is the same reasoning behind restaurant exhaust hood steam cleaning, and it is worth deciding in advance whether your crew will clean with steam, hot water or a chemical soak.
If steam is the method, put the machine in the checklist as a named item. Note where it is stored, who is trained to run it, and what to check before use: water supply, tank level, the nozzle set for hood work. A commercial kitchen steam cleaning unit fed from a water line and switched between dry and wet steam suits a fixed hood position; a hand-pushed or mobile unit suits kitchens where the cleaning point moves.
Split the checklist into three frequencies
The most common failure in kitchen cleaning schedules is one long list done "regularly". Split it instead:
- Daily, during or after service: surfaces under the hood, filters that are visibly loaded, the area around the cook line.
- Weekly: filter cleaning, canopy interior, grease trough, exterior of the hood.
- Monthly or quarterly: plenum, fan housing, duct inspection. Decide the interval from what the inspection notes show, not from a fixed habit.
Decide who cleans what, and what gets escalated
Your own crew can keep filters and accessible surfaces under control. Duct interiors and fan sections usually need a specialist, and the checklist should say where your responsibility ends. Write the escalation rule plainly: if the inspection finds coating past a set point, the contractor is called. Keeping the inspection notes is what makes that rule enforceable, and it is also what you show when an inspector asks how the kitchen is maintained.
Review the checklist after the first month
The first version will be wrong somewhere. Either a weekly task is already clean on day four, or a monthly item shows buildup by week three. Adjust the interval, then check the equipment list again — a task that takes an hour each time usually means the method, not the crew, is the problem. If the bottleneck is heat, that is when the conversation moves from central kitchen degreasing as an idea to specifying the machine that does it.
Once the intervals hold and the notes stay clean, the checklist stops being a compliance document and becomes part of how the kitchen runs. That is the point of writing it down.
