Pricing is the single biggest lever in a hood cleaning business, and most companies get it wrong. They quote a flat rate per hood, per fan, or per filter — and in doing so, they ignore half the variables that actually determine what the job costs them to perform. The result is predictable: some jobs are profitable, some break even, and a few quietly lose money every time.
There is a better way. It starts with understanding that you are not selling hoods cleaned — you are selling time, expertise, and compliance documentation. Once you price around time, everything else falls into place.
Flat-rate pricing assumes every job of a given size costs the same to perform. But a 10-foot hood above a charbroiler that runs 16 hours a day is not the same job as a 10-foot hood above an electric range in a church kitchen that operates twice a week. The grease load is different by an order of magnitude. The cleaning time is different. The chemical cost is different. The frequency required by NFPA 96 Table 12.4 is different.
When you flat-rate, you are averaging your profitable jobs with your unprofitable ones and hoping the math works out. Sometimes it does. As you grow, it increasingly does not.
The foundation of sound KEC pricing is door-to-door billing. Your clock starts when your crew leaves the shop (or their home, depending on your dispatch model) and stops when they return. Every minute in between is a cost to your business — fuel, labor, insurance, vehicle wear, chemical consumption, and equipment depreciation.
To build a time-based price, you need to know your fully loaded hourly cost. This includes:
Add these up, divide by productive hours per month, and you have your hourly cost floor. Your price needs to be above this number — ideally well above it, because you also need to fund growth, handle callbacks, and absorb the jobs that take longer than expected.
Not all hoods are created equal, and your pricing should reflect the actual work required. NFPA 96 Table 12.4 gives you the framework: cooking operations are categorized by type and volume, which determines cleaning frequency. Those same categories should influence your per-job pricing.
High-volume operations like charbroiling, wok cooking, and solid-fuel cooking (wood, charcoal, mesquite) generate heavy grease loads. These jobs take longer to clean properly, consume more chemicals, and put more wear on your equipment. They should be priced higher than light-duty operations like steam kettles, ovens, or low-volume electric cooking.
Build a simple multiplier table for your business. Your baseline is a standard moderate-volume cooking operation. From there:
These multipliers are not arbitrary — they reflect actual time and material differences. Track your jobs for a quarter and you will see the pattern clearly in your own data.
A system that has been cleaned on schedule with proper access panels is a fundamentally different job than one that is six months overdue with sealed-over access points and grease dams in the horizontal ductwork. Your pricing should account for this.
For new clients or systems with unknown history, build in a first-clean premium. You do not know what you are walking into, and the first cleaning almost always takes longer. After the first service, you have real data — photos, time logs, grease condition — and you can price subsequent cleanings accurately.
For existing clients who maintain their schedule, your pricing should reward consistency. This is not a discount — it is accurate pricing that reflects the reduced scope of work on a well-maintained system.
Drive time is the silent profit killer in hood cleaning. A job 50 miles from your shop costs significantly more than the same job 10 miles away, but many companies price them identically. This is a mistake.
Include drive time in your pricing model explicitly. You can build it into the door-to-door time calculation, add a mileage surcharge, or define service zones with different base rates. The method matters less than the principle: if your truck is on the road, you are spending money, and the price should reflect it.
Here is how this framework applies to a real job. Consider a standard 10-foot hood with 2 fans, 4 filters, and a 52-mile drive from your shop.
Total door-to-door time: approximately 5 to 5.5 hours. Multiply by your fully loaded hourly rate, apply your cooking type multiplier, and you have a defensible, profitable price. If this is a first-time client with no cleaning history, add your first-clean premium on top.
The beauty of this approach is transparency. When a client asks why your price is what it is, you can explain it. When you track your actuals against your estimates, you can refine it. And when you are deciding whether to take on a new client 80 miles away, the math gives you a clear answer.
Pricing a single cleaning is only half the equation. NFPA 96 Table 12.4 determines how often a system needs to be cleaned — monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, based on cooking type and volume. This frequency schedule is the backbone of your recurring revenue.
When you price a client, think in terms of annual value. A quarterly client at a moderate price is worth more than a monthly client you underpriced. Build your pricing so that every client on your roster contributes meaningfully to your annual revenue target, and so that your schedule reflects the actual compliance requirements — not just what the client wants to pay for.
The companies that grow sustainably in this industry are the ones that know their numbers. They know their hourly cost. They know their average job duration by hood size and cooking type. They know their drive time cost per mile. And they price accordingly — not based on what a competitor quoted, not based on a gut feeling, but based on the actual cost of doing the work right.
If you are not tracking this data today, start. Log your drive times, your on-site times, your chemical usage. Within a quarter, you will have enough data to build a pricing model that works for your business, your market, and your growth goals. Tools like HoodOps are designed to capture this data automatically as part of your workflow, but even a spreadsheet is better than guessing.
Price with confidence. Your work has value — make sure your pricing reflects it.
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