A restaurant hood cleaning service is the recurring contract a restaurant signs to keep its exhaust system legal and its insurance intact. In practice you are buying three things: the cleaning itself, the documentation that proves it happened, and a provider who will show up on the interval your kitchen actually requires rather than the one that suits their route.
A standard visit covers the hood canopy, the baffle filters, the accessible ductwork and the exhaust fan. Filters usually come out and go through a soak tank or a commercial dishwasher. Interior duct surfaces are scraped and pressure washed where access panels allow. The fan is degreased, and belts and bearings get a look while the housing is open. Good crews work at night or after close, mask the cook line and floor, and leave the kitchen ready for service.
NFPA 96 is the standard behind all of it. It applies to every commercial cooking operation in the United States and sets the cleaning interval by cooking volume and fuel type. A busy full-service restaurant typically lands on quarterly. A 24-hour diner, a high-volume fast food kitchen, or anything cooking over wood, charcoal or mesquite lands on monthly. Under the 2025 NFPA 96 update, kitchens operating 16 or more hours per day fall under mandatory monthly cleaning even without solid fuel.
Restaurants are the clearest case for this service because they combine daily grease output with the highest inspection frequency and the most to lose from a closure order. Independent operators, franchise locations, hotel restaurants and bar kitchens all fall in scope. When comparing providers, the questions that matter are whether they carry current insurance, whether they clean to bare metal where reachable, whether they photograph the work, and whether the service report is detailed enough to hand to a fire marshal without explanation.
Compare providers by location in our directory of hood cleaners by state, or read the guide to choosing a hood cleaner before you request quotes.