Kitchen exhaust cleaning is one of the few trades where the barrier to entry is low and the barrier to staying is high. Anybody can buy a pressure washer and a bucket of degreaser. Far fewer can hand a restaurant owner a document their fire marshal and their insurance carrier both accept. That gap is the whole business.
Here is what it takes to get in, in the order it actually happens.
Know What You Are Selling
You are not selling a clean hood. You are selling documented due diligence on a fire hazard.
Every commercial kitchen with cooking equipment that produces grease-laden vapor has an exhaust system: hood, filters, duct, fan. Grease accumulates through all of it. When it ignites, the duct carries fire into the building. The restaurant's insurance carrier knows this, their landlord knows this, and the fire marshal knows this — which is why the record of the cleaning matters as much as the cleaning.
If you are new to the standard itself, start with what NFPA 96 is and what a service certificate actually proves. Those two pages are the language your customers' insurers speak.
Get the Credential Before You Need It
The International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Association (IKECA) is the trade body for this work. It offers certification for the technicians doing the work and membership for the companies doing it, and that membership is the credential most commercial buyers recognize.
You do not need it to clean your first hood. You need it to win the accounts worth having. Hospital systems, school districts, hotel groups and multi-unit restaurant companies increasingly require or prefer an IKECA-affiliated vendor, because it is the only third-party signal they have that the company on the roof knows the standard.
Join early. The certification track takes time, and the sooner you start it the sooner it stops being the reason you lose a bid.
Equipment, Licensing and Insurance
Three things have to exist before your first paid job:
Equipment. At minimum: a hot-water pressure washer, containment (tarps, hose, a way to catch and haul wash water), degreaser rated for commercial kitchen exhaust, hand tools for scraping, ladders and roof access gear, fall protection, lighting, and a camera you will actually use. Build the containment side properly. Grease-laden wash water in a customer's drain damages their grease interceptor and violates the Clean Water Act — which makes it your liability, not theirs.
Licensing. Requirements vary by state and often by city. Check your state contractor licensing board before you quote anything, and check whether your municipality requires a wastewater discharge permit or a business license specific to the trade.
Insurance. General liability is non-negotiable, and most commercial clients will specify a minimum. You will need workers' compensation the moment you hire. Expect to produce a certificate of insurance naming the client as additional insured before you are allowed on the property — have that process ready before you need it, because the first time a property manager asks and you fumble it, you look like a startup.
Learn the Cadence — This Is the Part That Builds the Business
NFPA 96 Table 12.4 sets an inspection frequency based on two things: cooking volume and equipment type. Simplified, that lands as:
| What they run | Frequency |
|---|---|
| Solid fuel (wood, charcoal) | Monthly |
| Charbroilers, woks, high-volume cooking | Quarterly |
| 24-hour operations | Quarterly |
| Moderate-volume cooking | Semi-annual |
| Low-volume cooking (churches, senior centers, seasonal) | Annual |
That frequency is your customer's calendar, not a preference. And it is the reason this trade compounds: every account you win is not one job, it is two to twelve jobs a year, indefinitely, as long as you keep the records straight.
Two cautions. First, a local jurisdiction may set a minimum above Table 12.4 — verify before you promise a customer a frequency. Second, the edition in force is not the newest edition. A standard governs a kitchen only once that jurisdiction adopts it, and adoption runs on each state's own timeline. We publish the NFPA 96 edition by state, each confirmed one linked to the rule that adopts it.
Price It Right the First Time
The most common way a new hood cleaning company fails is not bad work. It is bidding by the hood and discovering the job took four hours instead of two.
Price from time, adjusted for cooking type and system configuration, and never quote a recurring account off a photo. The full method is in How to Price a Hood Cleaning Job.
Find the First Ten Accounts
Start where the cadence is fastest and the incumbent is weakest.
Independent restaurants with charbroilers or wood-fired equipment need you quarterly or monthly, and many of them are on a vendor who shows up, sprays, and leaves no paperwork. Walk in mid-afternoon, between lunch and dinner. Ask to look at the hood. Take a photo of the duct interior and show it to the owner.
Then widen: senior living, schools, hotels, hospitals, grocery prepared-foods departments. They buy on documentation and continuity, which is exactly where a new operator who takes the records seriously can beat a bigger one who does not.
Offer an inspection before you offer a cleaning. It gets you on the roof, it gets you the measurement, and it gives the owner a reason to say yes that is not a price.
What Separates the Companies That Last
Three habits, from year one:
- Photograph everything, before and after, labeled by access point. The photos are the record. The record is what you sell.
- Measure grease depth and write the number down. A cleaning with a measurement attached is evidence. A cleaning without one is a claim.
- Put the next service on the calendar before you leave the property. The cadence is already set by the standard — all you are doing is honoring it.
Do those three from the first job, and by the time you are running a second truck you have something most operators in this trade never build: a client history you can hand to an insurer, a fire marshal or a buyer.
When you are ready to grow past what a notebook can hold, HoodOps generates the NFPA 96 report and certificate from the job record itself and puts the next cleaning on the schedule automatically. And when the second truck is in sight, How to Grow Your Hood Cleaning Business From 1 Truck to 5 is the next chapter.