Kitchen exhaust, canopies and filters in a Camden hospitality venue

The routine list is about the surfaces the operation touches. Floors degreased with an appropriate product, walls and splashbacks to an agreed height, sinks and hand basins, the outside of ovens, fryers and cooktops where they are cool and accessible, benches, shelving faces, bin areas and the cool room door and handle. What is included has to be realistic about temperature and access, since a fryer cannot be cleaned while it is hot.

Equipment interiors are a separate conversation from surfaces. Inside a combi oven, a fryer vat, a grill plate or a dishwasher, the cleaning is part of operating the equipment and follows the manufacturer's instructions. Kitchen teams generally do it because they know the shutdown sequence. Where a contractor is asked to take it on, it needs naming, a method and a time when the equipment is safely cold.

A kitchen exhaust system accumulates grease along its entire length, from the filter through the plenum and duct to the fan and discharge. That accumulation is a fire risk, which is why the service is treated as a compliance activity rather than a cleaning preference. It involves access panels, work at height, hot-work-free procedures, chemical handling and a report that records what was done and to what standard.

None of that belongs in a general cleaning agreement. A venue that assumes its cleaner is handling the canopy because the kitchen looks clean has a gap it will only discover during an insurance review or an incident. Naming the exclusion explicitly, and pointing to the specialist service, is far more useful to an operator than a vague reference to kitchen cleaning that could be read either way.

Filters occupy a middle ground. Removing and washing baffle filters can be a routine kitchen task where the site does it in its own dishwasher, but a contractor taking it on needs the method, the frequency and the handling of grease-laden water agreed. It does not substitute for a full exhaust clean, and a scope should say that clearly so nobody treats filter washing as compliance evidence.

Grease traps are excluded without qualification. They are a trade waste item, pumped and disposed of by a licensed operator under an arrangement with the water authority, with documentation attached. The same applies to any drainage carrying kitchen waste. A cleaning provider that offered to handle either would be operating outside the licensing that applies to the material. The venue keeps the disposal documentation, which a cleaning provider could not supply in any case.