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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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.
Hood Cleaning Success Story
If you have been to my “Gear” page, you’ve probably seen a link to the Bidslot Program. This cold calling sales program WORKS! Here is some proof:
As Josh and April’s 1st KEC customer (I think), I wanted to give some honest feedback to any of you who are interested in their BidSlot program. I bought a 10 slot package in January, and April made her calls and set up many, many appointments through the latter half of February through the middle of March. I did not realize this, as you may not also, but a 10 slot package will actually get you 30 bids to do.
April will go to bat for you like nobody else, and get you into many places that you wouldn’t even know about or be getting into to give them a bid. I was very surprised with all the new locations she found for me. 99% of the time they were good places to bid. The few that didn’t work out were not April’s fault, but rather, an owner who canceled our appointment for one reason or another. Whenever that happened, I would call April and explain what happened. She always replaced those bid slots that crapped out on us, and I’m sure she would do the same for any of you as well.
I took so long to share this information with you all because I wanted enough time to go by for more of my bids to go through and be accepted. A lot of times, when you give a bid, the restaurant isn’t ready to make a switch at that moment and you need to touch base with them every so often or just wait until they become due again for a cleaning to remind them about your bid. So far, many of my bids are still out. Some places said we were “too high”, some places want to use us but don’t have the money, and some places have hired us to take over and care for their cleanings. I have been working with a new pizza chain that is growing here in Portland, which I never heard of until April got me the bid slot with them. I also now have my foot in the door with a large grocery store chain here, due to April’s hard work calling in our behalf and tracking down the right person who makes the decisions to put me in contact with. And lastly, I have a verbal agreement with a pretty cool historic location that April found for us. They want to replace their current cleaning company with us.
Bottom line… if you need to pick up accounts, Josh and April’s BidSlot program is the best thing out there, waaaaaay better than Service Magic or any other one of those “warm lead” companies, because BidSlot is tailored for the KEC industry in particular and I know that April will give you 110% effort to get you into locations to bid. All you have to do is show up on time and give them your price. If you only picked up just one account out of the 30 you will bid, you will have made your money back from your initial BidSlot purchase.
Much thanks to April for all the hard work she did for Silver Lining and helping us to succeed!
Letter from Scott with Silver Lining Hood Cleaning, Portland OR
Scott is just one of the many people that BidSlot has helped since opening just a few short months ago. If you have a problem getting accounts for your business, or you’re just too busy to cold call, give them a shot.
Ant
Kitchen Exhaust Fan Hinge Kit Survey
The Great Sell-Out And How It Affects You As A Hood Cleaner
This article gives me great pain to write. I believe that there has been a great injustice committed against hood cleaners every where and one of the parties involved, I would consider my friend. I have done videos about their products because I love them. I have sat on the board of directors of the Grease Police with this guy and know that he is an honest, hard-working, smart, cream-of-the-crop kind of guy. That’s why it makes it so hard to believe that he has sold out all hood cleaners in a big way. He’s probably going to hate me after this, but I can’t help it, for the sake of the industry, I feel that you guys – my readers- need to know what’s going on!
What am I talking about?
In case you haven’t heard yet, Driploc has sold out to BELFOR Holdings, Inc., The parent company of HOODZ. Now, I have nothing against HOODZ as a company, but they are selling franchise opportunities in YOUR backyard. Here is a press release from their website:
HOODZ, Nation’s Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Leader, Grows to 50 Locations in 4 Months of Existance
Ann Arbor, MI – HOODZ, the nation’s largest and most reputable kitchen exhaust hood cleaning franchise, has quickly become the nation’s largest and most reputable franchise in the industry by growing to more than 50 franchise locations in 26 states in just four months.
Having launched the franchise in July 2009, HOODZ has already opened locations in markets such as Atlanta, Tampa, Raleigh and Houston. With more than 50 HOODZ locations now in development as part of its strategic expansion, the company is anticipating even more explosive growth in 2010, and is poised to reach 150 total franchise locations by 2011.
They are planning on having 150 locations by 2011? If you thought you had competition before, just wait.
My problem with this is every time you purchase a Driploc product now, you will be feeding your competition. In my opinion, there is a HUGE conflict of interest in this setup. Every grease containment pad you get from Driploc, every magnet you buy, every hinge you put on will put money in the pockets of your competition. Unless of course you have a HOODZ franchise.
So what do you do?
Well, there are solutions. There are other grease containment systems out there that work well. I am in the process of setting up an interview for you all to hear with Jason Wellman, owner of The Grease Box. I believe that his systems are a GREAT alternative to Driploc’s. If you would like to send in questions for me to ask him, feel free to do so. That covers our grease containment needs.
What about magnets? Well, you can always go with the big square Harbor Freight magnets that I show in my first hood cleaning weekly tip. They’re $5 and strong.
Hinges: Good luck with that one. Driploc’s hinges are bombsheezy. They are so awesome, that the owner of the hood cleaning school I went to tried to claim credit for inventing them and was selling them as his. Captive Air hinges are good, but conditions have to be perfect for them to work. They’re fairly easy to install, but again, conditions have to be pretty much perfect. So, the jury is still out on hinges. If you have a suggestion, pass it along.
Unfortunately, Driploc didn’t ask my opinion before selling out. They are smart guys over there and they are good guys that is why this is so surprising and disturbing. I’m sure they made a wise financial decision for their company, but at what cost to the industry, did they do it? I, for one, feel betrayed.
Are You Tired Of Decision Makers Not Returning Your Calls? Here’s What You Can Do About It…
I’ve been reading a great book by Jeffrey Gitomer called The Sales Bible. It’s full of good information but one idea that really piqued my interest was what to do when you finally get through to the decision maker of an account you are trying to get and you leave voice mail after voice mail only to leave you wondering if they will ever call you back.
It’s not an easy task to get in touch with busy people and when you finally do, you want it to count. This is your chance!
So, you have the number in front of you. Your palms are a little sweaty.
You have in the back of your mind that all you are trying to sell on this first call is an appointment to meet with this person, nothing more. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? You pump yourself up a little and make the call.
Ring…Ring…
“Hi, You’ve reached Mr. Johnson and I’m out of the office right now, please leave your name and number and I will return your call as soon as possible”
Beep…
Crap… What do you say now? You didn’t really plan for this.. “Uh.. Uh.. Hi, Mr. Johnson, this is Anthony from Hood Cleaning Helper and I wanted to see if I could swing by to give you a proposal on your kitchen exhaust system”, you say.
BIG MISTAKE!
Mr. Johnson will probably never return that call and you have just blown a great opportunity. So, what is the right thing to say?
We all know that technology has it’s glitches, right? Let’s use this to our advantage. If Mr. Johnson is screening our calls, he will probably pick up instantly. If your message is in fact going to his voice mail, chances are he will get back to you ASAP.
Let’s try this:
Ring… Ring…
“Hi, this is Mr. Johnson…”
Beep…
Hi, Mr. Johnson, My name is Anthony and it’s important you return my call at 555-5555. I just got out of a meeting with the fire marshal and – Then just hang up!
As a restaurant owner or manager what thoughts will be racing through his mind? Of course, you will need a great presentation or some educational info that he will be asking about when he does call you back. Of course, you don’t want to lie either. If you haven’t met with your local fire marshal, go meet them. Ask them questions, get to know them. Do your research. Gather all kinds of market data that will impress or wow Mr. Johnson.
Hope this helps, please leave comments below of how you’ve used this technique and if it worked for you or not.
Ant
Minneapolis Fire KEC Picture Requirements
The city of Minneapolis is really cracking down on their requirements on kitchen exhaust cleaners. I’m not really sure if I like it or not. I like the idea, but not sure how it will work out.
They are asking for a lot of pictures from each cleaning, by each company. These will take hours to go through. If the inspectors would do their jobs in the first place and actually inspect the work, this would not be needed.
They all complain that they don’t have the time to inspect that many systems. Well, how in the world are they going to sit and look through hundreds and hundreds of pictures every week?
Like I said, I do like the idea, just don’t know how it will actually play out. The bad guys will figure out ways around it and the little guys or the not so computer savvy guys will be S.O.L.
Provide the following:
1. Clear digital photo of the work order # and building address and tenant.
2. Before and after photos of all hood components.
3. Before and after photos of the roof area around exhaust fans (including fans) from at least 2
adjacent sides, identify all pre-existing conditions.
4. Provide horizontal and vertical photos of building duct system and entire building trunk
system.
5. Provide before and after intake photos of fans.
6. Provide before and after photos of the back-side of fan blades.
7. Roof mounted system must provide a digital view of the vertical rise looking-up and a view
looking-down). one before and after photo of hinged roof-mounted fan opened and closed.
8. Provide before and after photos of horizontal and vertical access plates.
9. Provide photos that clearly identify all sides of vertical & horizontal runs & rises
10. Provide before and after photos of the back of the filter rails top and bottom.
11. Provide photos for the completed hoods with filters out and another with the filters properly in
place
I also wonder how it will effect the restaurant owners that already complain about the prices when they find that their price will probably go up to account for the extra time the hood cleaner will need to do this extra work?
I think companies should be doing this anyway, don’t get me wrong. I think I will try to put together a video for my readers to teach them how to take the pics, upload them, and email them or host them and send the link to the Fire Marshal.
Would that help you guys?
Note: Cleaning of commercial hood systems shall encompass the entire building’s
vertical and horizontal trunk systems. Cleaning only the commercial hood, plenum
and duct collar is not acceptable and the system will not be approved. The City of
Minneapolis doesn’t issue confined space entry permits; contractors must comply
with OSHA Standards.
This will hopefully work out for the good in the long run…
Here is the page for the requirements.
Cleaning Hood Filters – Weekly Tip
Anthony here from Hood Cleaning Helper.com 
This week’s hood cleaning tip I want to deal with filters. If you do clean the filters for your customer, I hope his tip helps you get those filters sparkling so your customer will think you are the greatest thing sense sliced bread.
The first thing you want to do is pull the filters out of the hood before you get it wrapped.
I use an 18 gallon Rubbermaid tub that I got from Walmart for like $4. I actually have a couple of them in case there are a lot of filters. What you want to do is put about a cup – 8 oz – of dry caustic in the bottom of the tub. Using a hose, start filling the tub with COLD water until it’s about 3/4 of the way full. I sometimes put a little bit of Dawn or other surfactant in just before I turn off the hose. It will help separate the grease from the surface a little better.
Note: Your mixture for this does NOT have to be strong. Dwell time will be on your side, so you don’t have to have really strong chemicals for this.
Next, put in the filters all the same way. Now, leave them sitting for at least 10-15 minutes before their first rotation. Then every time you walk by them, just rotate them a quarter turn until you have gotten all sides. When you take them out to rinse, the grease should come off easily and save you tons of time with a pressure washer.
Now, be sure to neutralize your dirty water before you dispose of it properly. Another thing to consider for this is if the filters are galvanized, the chems will turn them black. If the filters are aluminum, there may not be filters left when you go to take them out of the tub. Caustic eats aluminum!!! Be careful.
Hope this tip helps, be on the lookout for next week’s tip. If you have any suggestions for tips, feel free to email or just post them in the comments below.
Restaurant Grease Fire in Owensboro, Indiana
There have been a lot of restaurant grease fires lately. I have been linking them on twitter and here and some other places and to be honest, it’s hard to keep up with them all.
I wonder if it is because of the extreme winter weather this time of year and hood cleaners aren’t taking the time to go on the roofs of these places and clean the exhaust fans and ducts. With snow and ice up there, it’s easy to skip it.
This article says that there was creosote buildup in the ventilation system. Who knows when it was cleaned last? Owners and managers of restaurants sometimes give their cleaning duties to the lowest bidder and usually that lowest bid is low for a reason; they don’t clean the entire kitchen exhaust system!
I use this line in my advertising often, because it is so true, “Sometimes the cheapest price isn’t the least expensive choice”. Now, I’m not blaming the hood cleaner for this fire because to be honest, they can happen even if the system has been cleaned properly, but for arguments sake, lets say that the restaurant owner saved a few bucks on choosing this contractor.
They may save a couple of hundred dollars, even a thousand or so over the life of their contract. But, how much money did they lose from being closed and now having to repair their restaurant by choosing that lowest price?
For all of you hood cleaners out there, stick to your guns on prices! We know how much our insurance is. We know how much money it takes to run our businesses, it ain’t cheap! So when that restaurant owner says the last guy was cleaning it for $200 and you look down the duct and see months/years of build-up, you’ll know why they were only charging $200. They were simply cleaning where the owner could see and that was it.
