Restaurant Hood Cleaning
If you are a contractor that does restaurant hood cleaning, (sometimes referred to as kitchen exhaust hood cleaning), or just pressure washing commercially, you have come to the right place. Here at Hood Cleaning Helper, my goal is to equip other professionals with the right tools to help them achieve success. We make a living in an industry that looks upon us as the bottom of the barrel and I plan on changing that, one contractor at a time.
Hood cleaning prices are all over the board across the country and this isn’t good for the customers we serve, nor our company’s long term success. While bidding on contracts, a restaurant owner may have one price as low as $70 then another in the thousands. How can two different companies be so far from each other on price when they are suppose to be doing the same scope of work? The truth is, it usually comes down to what is actually being cleaned. Company A may only clean the hood and Company B is cleaning the entire kitchen exhaust system from hood to fan.
Over the years of restaurant hood cleaning, I have seen very good work and I have seen work that made me embarrassed to call myself a hood cleaner. Sometimes bad hood cleanings happen because the contractor wasn’t properly trained or didn’t have the proper tools to clean the kitchen exhaust system from top to bottom to bare metal as suggested by the NFPA #96. Sometimes, they are just lazy. I can’t help with the former, but I intend to help those of you who are looking for help because you want to do the job correctly.
I plan on passing down the years of personal experience, learned knowledge, specialty tools, business forms and many other things that will build up this industry and help those of you who are in the restaurant hood cleaning business to stay.
Be sure to leave your name an email address in the box to the right, to stay up to date on the latest information in our industry.
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A Pressure Washing Advertisment For You To Use
A couple years ago I wrote this advertisement for my fellow skirt-wearing pressure washing contractors to try out. I am not sure how it did for people because no one got back to me. A couple tried it but changed everything about it like putting their logo on top – which completely destroys it’s effectiveness! – and other things.
I’m now offering it to you to try out. The only thing I ask is DO NOT CHANGE IT by putting your logo on it or anything else that talks about how wonderful your company is. Nobody cares! Every contractor out there has horrible, altruistic advertisements that may look pretty cool, but in reality bring them no business.
So, if you would like to use this letter, feel free. Just let me know how it goes. If you don’t clean dumpster pads then figure out something else to demo. Something with REAL VALUE to people on the receiving end.
Also, it is very important to target the right customers for this. You don’t want to go out and do demos for people that have nothing else to clean. If you can’t get enough business to recoup your investment then don’t send them this letter.
Good luck and let me know how it goes if you try it.
See Letter Below:
P.S. If you can’t alter it yourself, let me know and I’ll send it to you in doc. format if that helps.
Are You A High Quality Cleaner?
Unless you want to get into a bidding war with fools, quality and service must be the thangs that you focus on with your business.
But what is quality?
Imagine with me that your wife tells you that she is in need of a new pair of shoes (What’s new, right?). Being the awesome husband you are, you immediately hop on the internet and start researching the best pair of heels known to mankind. You really want to outdo yourself and get her the best that money can buy.
You find a local store that carries these heels and off you go. After spending a weeks worth of income you head back to the house to surprise your wife. She is going to be so excited. These heels are made from imported dolphin lips and lined with kangaroo hair. Her feet will feel like they are walking on clouds 3 inches above the ground.
These shoes will make her legs resemble those of movie stars. Her friends will be so jealous. These heels are of the highest quality, how could anybody not love them?
You are probably asking yourself where I’m going with this, isn’t is suppose to be a hood cleaning site? Just stick with me for a second.
So now you have the shoes all wrapped up and you hand them to your wife. She opens them.
Her face goes from a huge smile to one of confusion. What? She’s not happy with them?
“These are nice, but they’re not what I wanted”, she says.
“But they are the finest quality in the world”, you scream. “How could they not be what you want?”
“I wanted running shoes”.
Doh!!!
Quality Isn't What You Think It Is
So how does this relate to cleaning kitchen exhaust hoods?
I’ll tell ya. You can talk all day until you’re blue in the face to a potential customer about the benefits of foaming technology and the super duper scrapers that you use and it can mean absolutely nothing to them.
Bare nekked metal should always be the standard, but sometimes other things hold higher value than how every spec of grease has been removed from a corner of a duct that took you 3 hours to accomplish.
Quality is giving the person exactly what they want/need.
To some owners, the time factor is what they are looking for. They may be paying an employee to stay behind while you clean and couldn’t care less about how wonderful you downstreamed their system, they want to get that employee off the clock as soon as possible, period.
Sometimes it’s how you leave the kitchen when you are done is what quality is to them. You can clean the exhaust system good enough to shave your face from, but their kitchen is a mess when they arrive in the morning so to them you do a poor quality service.
See what I’m saying?
Find out what your customers want/desire then give them that. You will be seen as a high quality cleaner. That doesn’t mean to hurry up and leave the duct looking like it hasn’t been touched. If you are bidding a customer that doesn’t care if you touched the fan or not as long as you are in and out of there within an hour, then find another customer.
Target your marketing better. Advertise what YOU offer as a company and find the accounts that want what you offer.
Here is another article on how to do that: Marketing Your Hood Cleaning Business
Your Turn:
Have you ever disappointed a customer because your idea of quality and theirs were two different things? Tell your stories below.
How To Make A Few Extra Bucks With Your Pressure Washer
In economic times such as we’re in, we can lose a substantial amount of business to low-balling companies who are willing to work for nothing. Unless you are fine with taking a pay-cut, you must find a way to make up the loss of revenue.
I’m not a particularly smart person but I do have a knack for thinking outside the box. (Been inhaling too much caustic over the years, I guess)
Before I tell you about my latest brain fart that can make you some money, let me first tell you a couple things you will need to pull this off.
1). A pressure washer – gas powered w/ a tank for water. You need to be mobile.
2). Some concrete cleaning experience. You don’t have to wear a skirt, but if you don’t know what you’re doing and go blasting sidewalks @ 4000 psi one night, you are going to hate life in the morning when you are usually getting your much needed beauty rest. Wouldn’t hurt to get one of those fancy surface cleaners either.. you know, the ones that look like a lawn mower.
3). Stencils. A few companies sell pressure washing stencils. Find a good one and order some, but WAIT!!! Before you pick up the phone to order one, read the rest of the article and see which ones to buy.
OK, here’s the idea.
Use stencils to advertise… for other people. All the pressure washing guys are using them to advertise their own businesses (which is really smart), but what about using them to advertise for other folks who have no kind of connection to the pressure washing/hood cleaning business?
There are a lot of companies that would love to use this in their arsenal of advertising, but don’t have pressure washers, or even have a clue on how to do this. There are tons of possibilities in different markets and I’m going to leave that up to you guys to figure out, but I will give you one: Real Estate!!!
Be sure to include the cost of the stencil into your price. Some companies have HUGE advertising budgets and are willing to pay for some good guerrilla marketing. You are just the person to help them out.
How do I know this will work, you ask? Because a real estate agency approached me about it. Before I even thought of doing it for other people, they saw one of my custom stencils somewhere and thought it was a genius idea. They were willing to pay BIG money for me to put some stenciled lettering in some strategic places. I was willing to help.
Are you?
Let me give one more hint if you are going to do this. Don’t go with the boring “company name” or “website address” when you order your stencils. Think outside the box people.
As a matter of fact, let’s make this a little more interesting. If you do this, send me a picture of it, with you standing next to it. If you are a hood cleaning contractor, I will send you your very own Hood Cleaning Helper version Pute` for free. If you don’t know what that is, watch the video below.
If you are a pressure washing contractor, how about we do an interview with you about your company and I’ll put it on the website? It will give you some exposure and help spread the word about your company.
Text Advertising
Are You Missing The Boat If You Aren’t Advertising Via Text Messages? Here Are 2 BIG Reasons You May Want To Consider It…
Texting is for the youngsters only, isn’t it? Not hardly.
According to one PEW study 90% of phone owners send and receive text messages on a daily basis. One-third of those people text over 100 messages per day. Texting has actually overtaken every other form of communication including face-to-face, email and instant messaging!
So what excuse do you give when your customers ask why you don’t text them for business? Do you want to run the risk of looking outdated, behind the times?
There has never been a better, more instant way of communicating with all of your clients at once, than now. There are a few things to consider when using texting for business, however. For one, people that opt-in to be advertised to by you must be able to opt-out at any time.
Another thing is there must be a disclaimer informing your client of the potential charges that may apply on their cell phone plan. Those are the biggies. Other than that, this is one of the best advertising methods to come around in a long time and this is why:
* The open rate of text messages exceeds any other form of advertisement known to man
Even the best marketers in the world can only hope for an email open rate of around 35%. The first challenge to winning over your client to buy from you is getting them to actually OPEN your advertisement! If they don’t open it, the close ratio will hover right around 0% even if it’s the greatest ad you’ve ever written.
The open rate with a direct mail piece in an envelope is somewhere around 3% if you’re lucky. If you send out 100 pieces of mail – 3 people might open it!!!
Texting, on the other hand has a 95% open rate. When people get texts, they open them. Your first hurdle is cleared.
* Texting is INSTANT
Let’s just say that you have a full week of work scheduled and it’s going to be one of your best weeks since you started your company. The phone rings Monday evening and the hood cleaning job you had scheduled for Tuesday afternoon fell through because the owner got hit by a bus or something. You don’t have time to send out postcards, you can’t hop on the phone and call managers because they probably left earlier that day so what do you do?
With text messaging you can send out a broadcast text to all the people on your list who may be due for a cleaning and offer a discount if they schedule for tomorrow afternoon. Heck, even if they aren’t really due yet, they may jump on it just for the discount! [Feel free to use my text in the picture above if you want 
]
Now you don’t have to worry about losing that work on Tuesday afternoon just because one of your clients got hit by a bus. It’s still going to be the best week you’ve had since you started and it’s all because you do this new-fangled thing called texting.
There are quite a few companies out there that handle this stuff for you. Here is one of them. Whatever company you choose, just make sure that they include the legal stuff so you don’t get in trouble. The company I just linked to does.
If this article has helped you at all, please leave a comment below.
How To Make Your Own Keg Sprayer
Do you use pump up sprayers to apply your chemical? Do you get tired of pumping them after a couple seconds of spraying? Here is a simple solution for you, make your own keg sprayer. The kegs can be a little difficult to find sometimes, but will save you tons of money in the long run.
After you have the keg.. you need 1 of these
and one of these
One is for gas (or air) and the other is for liquid.
¼” ID hose as long as you want. I wouldn’t go any further than 100’ though. Get some hose clamps, teflon tape and wrap the teflon around the hose barb a few times, then hose clamp your ¼” hose to it.
Next, You will need something like this
, but a chem gun like this works good too.
I just like the pressure washing gun because of the versatility after the gun. You can use different length wands, angled wands, etc.
Then you will need some of these.
Play around with the size of the orifice (that sounds dirty, doesn’t it?) and see what kind of pressure works best for your needs.
That takes care of the liquid side.
For the air side, I made a little pig-tail for it. I clamped a short ¼” piece of hose to the fitting just like the liquid side then put a quick connect fitting on the other side to connect to an air compressor.
Note: you may want to put a check valve on the air side so no liquid can backflush into your air compressor as a just in case!
Be sure to disconnect from the stainless steel fitting after filling with air. Always clean all fittings and hoses after each job and they should last for a very long time. Something else to consider is only putting about 3-4 gallons of chemical in the tank before you fill the rest with air. That way, you will be able to dispense the entire contents of the keg without having to fill it again with air.
Always wear proper PPO when using these because they can take up to about 110 psi of pressure from your air compressor. Having something like that blow up in your face isn’t fun. Be careful.
Hope this helps a little.
Apply Chemicals Using Downstream Method
If you have never experienced the pleasure of only carrying to the roof one hose, you are really missing out. Lugging around a pump-up sprayer is for the birds and foaming can be a hassle too. I show you in this video all you need to be able to apply chemicals using your pressure washer, then with one little step switch right to rinsing it off.
Mixing the chemical is the same. Yes it does get watered down, but the gallon per minute and pressure from your machine make up for it. Remember to add a little bit of surfactant to your mix so you can see where you spray and also it will give it some dwell time. Dawn works just fine as a surfactant.
Check out the video and leave your comments, suggestions, etc.. below.
By the way got your video for bagging the hoods was great even though I been doing it my way for years I pick up quite a bit was worth every penny I spent on it!
Thanks for your help have a great weekend!
Randy L.
Get More Response From Your Postcards
How many times have you sent out a postcard campaign and only got a few calls? How many times did somebody call you weeks, months or even years after receiving your postcard?
Wouldn’t you like to get responses right away instead of months later?
Well, I know how!
It’s a well-known statistic that only about 3% of people in any given market are in the “BUY NOW” category at any given time. It’s also and accepted statistic that 1% return on a postcard campaign is considered good.
So, lets say you send out a targeted 100 postcards. Only 3 of them are in the buying mood and looking for someone right now. Another 7% or so are possibly thinking about it and could be swayed if given the right offer.
So, you have a total of 10%, or 10 cards that have any chance of getting you business, correct?
Next month you will have a different 10 that are in need of your services, then the same thing the month after that. What most people do is send out another 100 postcards, month after month after month to the same list until you finally get to all of them that are finally in the “Buy Now” category. Do you do that?
Ask any worthwhile marketer and they will tell you that response rate goes up dramatically the more you hammer the same list. The first mailing may produce 1% return; the second, 3%, etc…
That seems like a lot of money to send out all those postcards though, doesn’t it?
Here is what Ant does
Put together a postcard that offers a special deal for a limited time. Do a small amount to a targeted list!!! I can’t stress that enough. Don’t buy 5 billion postcards that are exactly the same.
Don’t make a postcard that doesn’t have a deadline either!
Anyway, off my soapbox. Along with your offer and deadline on your postcard, mention a special page that they can go to to lock in that offer even if they are not ready to “Buy Now”. Even if they are just considering having you bid the job, they must “register” on that page before the deadline.
They are not committing to anything, they are simply putting themselves on a list to be able to take advantage of the great offer when it comes time for them to need your services.
For instance: Let’s say that your car is getting old and it’s almost time for a new one. The local car dealership has an awesome $10K off promotion that’s only good for next weekend.
You’re not quite ready to get the car just yet, but you want to take advantage of that $10K off when you are ready. All you have to do is register on their site and you are locked in for that deal until it’s time to buy. Make sense?
Here are the benefits for YOU as the contractor -
Once they register to be grandfathered in on the special deal, they are automatically placed on your emailing list.
Now, you can market to them any time you want at the push of a button – FOR FREE!!!
Now it won’t take 7 or 8 postcard mailings to that person, it will only take 1 postcard mailing and ever how many emails.
BAM!!! How much money did you just save? If you don’t know how to do all the technical stuff to make the mailing list, don’t worry, it’s super easy. Here is where to go. Email me if you need help.
Ant
Pressure Washing Chemical Application Tip
“How do you apply chemical for hood cleaning” is a question I get asked often. Most people have seen my foam videos and most people think I am some foaming maniac. As much as I use to be, it’s just not true anymore. As a matter of fact, downstreaming is my preferred method of chemical application just about 100% of the time.
If you don’t know what downstreaming is, let me know and I will help you. But, basically it’s using a special injector that sucks your chemical from a bucket beside your pressure washer (usually) and is pushed through your pressure washing hose out your gun.
The chemical is injected into the stream “after” the pressure washer pump so there is no damage to your pump; that’s the good news.
The bad news is it’s still going through your hoses and I’ve heard many people tell me that it shortens the life of your hoses and all that crap, but I haven’t had a problem and it wouldn’t matter that much to me anyway because it saves so much time and is so simple and effective.
Anyway, enough with the layman’s down streaming lesson as best as I know to explain it.
Although the injectors are usually somewhere between $12-$65, they usually only seem to last about 3 or 4 months. However, I just got an email from my good friend, Alexy on his find and solution. Check it out.
Just wanted to share a way to clear up downstreaming issues we have had and a simple fix. We have been downstreaming for 95% of our jobs for the last year and a half. In that time we found that the regular general downsreamer would last about 3-4 months before the valve seat went and the Adams injector would get about 6 months out of it before the same thing happened.
We switched about a year ago to the check valve downstreamer made by Bob at Pressure Tek and since then we have not had any stoppages because the downstreamer valve failed. We have however had alot of cases where after about 4-5 months the same downstreamer would not flow as much chem or stop flowing at all with the valve working.
After scratching our heads trying to figure out what was happening I found that the chem was collecting immediately downstream of the injector at the fitting and building up in the inside of the hose end to where it goes into the hose to the point that it was restricting the flow to the point that the downstreamer would not work. The solution was to take a 15/64″ drill bit that has from 6″ to 8″ and use it to ream out the hose end past the end of the metal ( you will not pull any metal off but will pull a bunch of dried, caked SH out that looks like chalk) We had two, 100 foot sections and one, 50 foot section we did this to and were amazed at how much dried SH had collected in the fitting.
Hope this helps.
Alexy
Washington DC Hood Cleaning Specialists
This is something that I’ve never considered and it’s a great tip. Thanks for the permission to use your email Alexy. I’m sure my readers will appreciate this tip.
If you have a tip you would like to share, feel free to put it in the comments below, or email me if you would like to go into more detail.
More Website Sales With Less Effort
“Who Else Wants More Sales From Their Website Traffic, Without More Effort?”
How much business do you get from your website? If your answer is “not enough” or “I don’t know” then you will appreciate this article. If your answer is “I don’t even have a website” then leave me a comment below and I’ll do a lesson on building an efficient website so you can get into the year 2010.
So, you have a website and you have some traffic coming to it with your Google Adwords campaigns or other form of internet advertising. Hopefully you have some analytics so you can track how many people are coming to your site, and where they are coming from.
If this already sounds too technical and you don’t even know what the heck an analytic is, just hang in there…
Your analytics is telling you that you have 30 visitors coming to your site everyday, but nobody has clicked on your “Click For Free Quote” button. Why isn’t anybody clicking on that? Don’t they want a free quote?
After all, I just got through telling them how great I am, what services I provide and what areas I cover. I told them that my quality is better than everybody else’s and have some before and after hood cleaning pictures or roof cleaning pictures (or whatever service you provide) to prove it!
You paid good money to have the fanciest graphics on your site. The layout, the colors and pictures are how the “guys on the forums” and your graphic artist guy told you to put it. Why isn’t it getting you jobs?
I’ll tell you why, but first let me share some information that may help a little bit.
At any given time, in any given industry there are only about 30% of consumers that are ready to buy. It’s actually more like 10% are ready to buy, but about 30% are able to be swayed. The rest of them aren’t interested, the time isn’t right or they are happy with their current provider/service/product.
Does that mean that they will never be in that 30% that IS ready to buy now? No, it just means that they aren’t ready now! So, if you have 30 visitors coming to your site everyday, at best you only have a chance of selling your service to 10 of them.
It still cost you money to bring them to your site, right?
If only there was a way to hit them at the “right time”…
If only you could know when they are in need of your service and send them an advertisement so you are the person they think of when that service comes up…
If only you were there at the push of a button when they come into their restaurant and the current hood cleaner left a mess all over their kitchen…
If only you were a push of a button away when that business owner walks through his parking lot and sees his concrete carved up by the pressure washing company the night before…
If only you could do all this without sitting in front of the computer all day and night and have it be automated…
Well, it is possible and it already exists. Matter of fact, I’ve been using this service for over 2 years now and it has worked flawlessly.
Before I tell you what this service is, let me tell you what it IS NOT.
- It isn’t FREE.
- It isn’t outsourcing a person from another country that doesn’t speak your language very well that you pay sweat-shop type wages to have them sit around and do this stuff for you.
- It isn’t complicated enough that you need a computer nerd show you how to use it. (though it does take some copy and pasting ability)
Now, some of the things that it is:
- It is cool.
- It is a huge TIME SAVER
- It is dependable and consistent.
- It is worth every penny.
Now let me tell you why this service that I’m talking about is soooo important to have; why it’s almost mandatory if you plan on keeping that other 70% of “Not Yets” around long enough until they are buyers.
It’s a proven fact that most people need to be exposed to any service or product at least 5 times before they decide to buy. It’s also true that only about 10% of your average salesmen return more than once after being told no.
Most people aren’t ready to just click on a link to have some pushy sales person come visit their restaurant or home to sell them something after browsing a website for a couple minutes. A relationship needs to be established first.
Let me give you an example:
Let’s say that you come to my house because I have some puppies for sale. I’m on an important call but tell you to go ahead and grab yourself something to drink from the fridge if you want and I’ll be right out.
What are the chances that you will do that? Not good, right? Even if you’re thirsty, you’re probably not going to go into my refrigerator and get yourself something to drink. It would be awkward, wouldn’t it?
Scenario 2 –
You come inside, I’m on the phone and I tell you to have a seat. I go to the refrigerator and get you a nice cold water because I know it’s hot and you must be thirsty. I walk over and hand it to you.
What are the chances that you drink it now? VERY GOOD, right? It would almost be rude to NOT take it.
That’s exactly how you must think of your website. If somebody has taken the time to answer your adwords ad, or however they made it to your site, they are thirsty. Give them something to drink and you will make a friend and start building a relationship.
Even if they aren’t ready for a “FREE Quote” just yet, give them something of benefit (NOT A SALES LETTER DISGUISED as a benefit!!!) and keep giving them something of value until they are in that “ready to buy” category.
If you are saying to yourself, “I’m not made of money, I can’t give away a whole bunch of free stuff”, then you are just like me. However, information that helps restaurant owners, managers, homeowners, etc is readily available for free and just has to be sent to them. And, it’s free to send when it’s done through email.
Let’s just say that I know my tires aren’t going to last much longer on my truck. I’m not quite ready to buy yet, but in my research I come across a web page that has a free offer on the side that says something like
“GET THIS FREE REPORT ON HOW TO MAKE YOUR NEXT SET OF TIRES LAST LONGER BY SIMPLY ENTERING YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS BELOW”
I enter my email address and immediately get some great information on tire pressure, the differences in load ranges, what the rubber is mixed with to make certain tires and other goodies like that. Then at the bottom of that, there might be something like
“WHEN YOU’RE READY FOR A NEW SET OF TIRES, COME CHECK OUT OUR GIANT WAREHOUSE ONLINE WHERE WE BEAT ALL PRICES – GUARANTEED!”
Well, I’m still not ready to buy, but a week later I get another email from that same company with a great story from a satisfied customer of theirs that had a blow out on the freeway, but because the tires were this special mixture of rubber and wires she was able to make it another 2 miles to the service center and out of danger’s way. Great story.
I check my tires the next time I get in my truck, but I’m still not ready to buy.
About a week after that I get another email from them telling the proper way to check the tire pressure and attached to the email is a nice little excel spreadsheet that is used for a log of when the tires were rotated and such.
I print that out. I go to my truck and notice that it looks like the front passenger side is getting pretty slick…
That’s how it works guys. Build a relationship. Give valuable information; make it about your customer and the sales will follow.
When you use the service that I’m getting ready to tell you about, all of this is done behind the scenes with you only doing the work ONE TIME!!!
That service is Aweber. You can learn more about them HERE.
I have been using their service for years now and it has worked flawlessly. They keep you legal and non-spammy. You go through a simple process of building your form that will be on your web page, then it automatically turns it into html jibberish that you just copy and paste where they tell you to. It’s so simple!
Now you have a system in place that captures not only the ones that are ready to buy now, but also the ones that are not ready.. yet. It allows you to expose them to your service ever how many emails you want to set up.
It may take a week for them to call, or it may take a year for them to finally call, but either way, you’ve spent the same money on the initial advertising and you didn’t waste that money.
I can’t tell you how easy and how worth it is to have this service.
So, you have a couple options. You can leave that “Free Quote” crap up and hope that somebody opens your fridge and gets something to drink, or you can GO HERE to Aweber, sign up for a membership and virtually hand them an ice cold water.
They even have a FREE test drive going on right now.. check it out
Can You Have More Sales, Too?
Helping over 75,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber’s opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.
