← Kitchen hood cleaning bid calculator

How much should I charge for kitchen hood cleaning?

A per-hood price treats a 10-foot canopy as the whole job. It isn't. Two kitchens can share the exact same hood length and be completely different tickets once the duct run and the fan are counted — eight feet of horizontal duct is a short add-on, thirty feet of vertical duct plus a rooftop fan through a hatch is most of the labor. Price the exhaust system, not the hood count.

Open the free hood cleaning bid calculator

What a per-hood number cannot see

Duct length and orientation. Horizontal duct and vertical duct do not clean at the same rate, and vertical runs with roof access add real time before a brush ever touches grease.

Grease load. A line that runs solid fuel or 24 hours accumulates faster than a light-cooking kitchen on the same schedule. That is a labor multiplier, not a flat surcharge.

Access and after-hours. A rooftop hatch, a cramped mechanical room, or a requirement to work after the kitchen closes all change the hours — and after-hours labor is its own line, not folded into the day rate.

A bid you can defend

  1. Price the canopy and filters by square feet, then add horizontal and vertical duct separately.
  2. Apply a grease-load multiplier and an access multiplier to the duct and fan labor.
  3. Add after-hours labor, travel, chemicals, and disposal as their own lines.
  4. Load the wage (payroll burden), then add overhead, and price = cost ÷ (1 − target margin).

The calculator does that arithmetic in your browser. It does not determine a required cleaning interval — that is an authority-having-jurisdiction and operator decision, not an NFPA 96 finding this tool can make for you.

Worked example

Two kitchens each with a 10-foot canopy: one has eight feet of horizontal duct straight to an exterior wall fan, the other has thirty feet of vertical duct and a rooftop fan reached through a hatch, on a solid-fuel line that runs light-cooking grease load into heavy. The canopy price is nearly identical. The duct and fan price is not, and the second kitchen's grease-load multiplier changes the labor again. The calculator prices the system each kitchen actually has, then rolls it into one job price and an annual contract figure.

Common questions

How do you price kitchen hood cleaning?

Price the exhaust system, not the hood count: canopy square feet and filters, plus horizontal and vertical duct, plus the fan. Apply a grease-load multiplier, an access multiplier, after-hours labor if you work after close, travel, chemicals, and disposal. Then add overhead and the margin you intend to keep.

Why do per-hood quotes lose money?

Two kitchens can share a 10-foot canopy and have completely different labor. Eight feet of horizontal duct is a short add-on. Thirty feet of vertical duct and a rooftop fan through a hatch is most of the job. A flat per-hood number cannot see that.

How often should a restaurant hood be cleaned?

Operators commonly schedule from annually on light cooking to monthly on solid-fuel or 24-hour lines. Frequency is an authority-having-jurisdiction and operator decision. This calculator does not determine a required interval.