Starting a Hood Cleaning Business
So you want to start a hood cleaning business? I get 3-4 calls or emails every week from someone that wants to get into the hood cleaning business. They are tired of working for somebody else and there are a ton of restaurant in their area. I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many times I’ve heard that.
So what does it take to start a hood cleaning business?
The first and I believe the most important ingredient to a successful hood cleaning business, or any business for that matter, is market research. You can have the best idea in the world, but if there are no customers, your business will not survive.
Not only do we need a certain quantity of customers, but are those customers “worthy” customers? I don’t mean to sound condescending or anything like that, but opening a Nordstroms in the Appalachian mountains wouldn’t go over too well even though the quality of Nordstroms products are very high.
One way to find out if there is a fitting market for your hood cleaning business is competition. If there is NO competition, that is a bad sign. There may not be a market for your business. If there is a lot of competition, that presents a whole new set of challenges, but at least you will know that there is a market.
The best way I know of about doing market research in your area is using a survey form to check some things out. You want to know if the fire marshal is competent and actually inspects system. There are some tricks and easy ways around this without asking a business owner this question.
Another thing to check is if the customers’ systems are in good condition, generally. When I first started my business, in one certain area, there was NO competition and I thought this was going to be easy pickins’. Well, it was easy pickins and I found out why, after I started cleaning them. Most of the systems were 50 years old and every broken code known to man had been grandfathered in. I am a decent salesman, but try talking a mom and pop restaurant -that is looking for the lowest price for a cleaning- into spending $30K to upgrade their system just so you can clean it properly. No wonder there was no competition! Nothing like seeing plywood for access panels and things like that.
So, as you can see, it’s not just about if there are “a bunch” of restaurants in your area. It’s not just about whether or not you can do a really good job at cleaning. It’s not whether or not you should use foam, or a pump up sprayer to apply chemical. It’s not whether or not you should mix your own chemicals or buy them pre-mixed from a manufacturer. There are a lot of factors that go into having or starting a successful hood cleaning business and the first place to start is market research. It’s not fun, it’s boring and you may not like the results, but if you do it correctly and can save you tons of headaches and a whole lot of money.
When I first started in the industry I worked for a company that needless to say is no longer in business be it due to the way they did the job or their lack of customer service, I tend to think it was for both reasons. I started with them as a helper who knew nothing about cleaning a restaurant exhaust hood system. Through the years the cleaning process has changed drastically and in working for other companies that knowledge that I did acquire gave me an idea as to what the customer deserves for his cleaning dollars spent. Back when I first started we used lime throughout the system in this process we would take the filters out and clean the system down to bare metal throughout and spray a light coat of cooking oil through the system and then spray a light coat of lime throughout the entire system, when we would come back to clean the system we would simply brush the old dirty grease soaked lime out with the fan on and simply repeat the process. Kind of pointless when you stop and compare the way we clean today.
But going through the different processes over the years has given me the knowledge to be able to service our customers today, some hood exhaust cleaning companies have repeatedly given this industry a bad reputation both by the way they do the service down to their customer service, we at Grease Busters have tried to change that. It is our opinion that the customer comes first both in the way we do the service and in customer service, I have inspected jobs for bids that right off I could tell that the company servicing the customer was taking short cuts and only interested in getting that money simply because they know the customer will never go on the roof or look through the system to see if they have done what they paid them to do.
When I started this company the first thing I did was to establish a before and after picture data base both for the customer, insurance companies, and fire marshals, and most importantly myself, this gave me a way to control the quality of our service to the customer, I can go back to a cleaning 5 years ago and tell you what tech cleaned it, what day and date it was cleaned, and how well the overall job turned out. The second thing I did was throw out the rushing through the cleaning so we could make it to another cleaning just for the sake of making more money in one night, If I only do one job a night at least I know the customer is receiving a good cleaning and no short cuts were taken just to get to another job on time. Perhaps the most important thing is our customer service; when we say we are going to be there we are, I never let a system cleaning go past the due date. Our customer’s has far more to worry about than wondering if we are going to show up or not.
If there happens to be issues from the cleaning most the time the before and after pictures will settle any issues there are, I do not allow my staff to help their selves with food or cleaning supplies that do not belong to us. I try to put myself into the customer’s shoes and realize that we are guest in their kitchen hired to do a much needed service. We perform that service honestly and with integrity.
Hi
Iam looking for hood cleaning school in Toronto canada or if i can take class in usa . Thanks