Commercial Kitchen Cleaning Services in North York
Elite Hood Cleaning North York performs seven services, and they divide cleanly into two groups. Five of them deal with the exhaust system that carries grease out of the building. Two of them deal with the grease that never made it into the exhaust and settled on the kitchen instead. This page exists to help you pick a starting point, and most kitchens genuinely only need one of them.
Start here if you are not sure what to ask for
Most enquiries arrive as one of four situations. Find yours and the right service follows from it.
| What prompted the call | Start with this | Why that one vs the others |
|---|---|---|
| An inspector, insurer or landlord asked for cleaning records | Kitchen exhaust cleaning | Only a full system clean produces a certificate that covers hood, filters, duct and fan together. A partial service leaves the gap visible on the paperwork. |
| The kitchen is opening, changing hands, or setting up a schedule | Restaurant hood cleaning | This is the page about frequency and scheduling rather than about mechanics. It answers how often, at what cost, around which service hours. |
| Smoke is hanging in the kitchen or the hood is not pulling | Exhaust hood cleaning | Capture failure usually starts at the hood and the filter bank, so that is where diagnosis starts before anyone quotes duct work. |
| Grease is showing up on the roof, a wall, or a ceiling | Rooftop grease containment or kitchen degreasing | Grease outside the system is a different problem from grease inside it, and it is often the building owner rather than the tenant who pays. |
The five exhaust system services
These overlap deliberately. A full system clean includes the hood and the filters; the individual pages exist because kitchens often need to understand or buy one part on its own.
Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning
The whole system in one visit: canopy, filters, plenum, accessible duct run and rooftop fan, with a certificate covering all of it. This is the service that satisfies an inspector or an insurer.
The full system serviceRestaurant Hood Cleaning
The same physical work, framed around the operator's decisions: how often, at what cooking volume, scheduled around which shifts, and what your renewal paperwork needs to show.
Frequency and schedulingExhaust Hood Cleaning
The canopy on its own: Type 1 and Type 2 hoods, the plenum behind the filters, capture and containment, and why a hood that looks clean can still be failing.
The hood itselfHood Filters
Baffle filter washing, condition assessment against the standard, and replacement. The single cheapest maintenance item in the kitchen and the most commonly neglected.
Filters as a componentRooftop Grease Containment
The fan, the curb and the roof surface around the discharge point. A membrane and warranty question as much as a fire question, and usually the landlord's cost.
The roof end of the systemThe two kitchen surface services
Grease that never reached the exhaust has to go somewhere. These two services deal with where it went, and neither of them is janitorial cleaning.
Kitchen Equipment Cleaning
Fryers, ranges, char grills, salamanders, ovens and combi units stripped, degreased and returned to a baseline a kitchen team can hold with nightly cleaning.
The cookline appliancesKitchen Degreasing
Walls, ceilings, structure and hard-to-reach surfaces behind and above the line, treated as accumulated fire load rather than as a housekeeping job.
Surfaces beyond the hoodBoth of these are deep cleaning of a commercial kitchen, and both are booked as scheduled projects rather than as recurring visits. Neither is a substitute for daily kitchen cleaning by your own staff, and neither is offered as a janitorial contract. If what you need is nightly floors, bins and washrooms, that is a different trade, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.
What is not offered
Naming the boundary is more useful than a longer list of services.
Elite Hood Cleaning North York does not pump grease traps, does not repair or replace ductwork, does not repair or replace exhaust fans, does not install hoods or hinge kits, and does not clean residential range hoods. Where a job needs one of those, the condition is photographed and written into the report so the right trade can quote it. A cleaning contractor who quietly agrees to a repair is a cleaning contractor who is about to do it badly.
Building ventilation and HVAC duct cleaning are also outside this work. A kitchen exhaust system and a building air system look superficially similar and are governed by different requirements, cleaned with different equipment, and certified differently. Sites needing both should hire both.
Common questions about the services
Do I need to book several of these services separately?
Usually not. A kitchen exhaust cleaning already includes the hood, the filters and the rooftop fan as part of the system, so booking those individually is not necessary. The separate pages exist because kitchens sometimes need just one component addressed, such as a filter set replaced or a roof cleaned after a landlord complaint.
Can equipment cleaning and degreasing be done during the same visit as the exhaust?
Yes, and combining them is usually cheaper than two separate visits because the setup, the protection of the kitchen and the shutdown only happen once. Say so at the walk-through and the quote will price the combination rather than the parts.
Which service produces the certificate an inspector wants?
Kitchen exhaust cleaning. The certificate references the NFPA 96 standard and covers the system as a whole, naming what was cleaned and which duct sections were unreachable. A filter-only or hood-only visit does not produce equivalent coverage, and presenting one as if it did is misleading.
Is there a contract, or can a kitchen book a single visit?
Single visits are normal and no contract is required. Most kitchens settle into a schedule after the first clean because it is easier to hold the interval than to remember it, but that is a choice made after the work, not a condition of getting a quote.
What does a quote cost?
Nothing. The walk-through and the written quote are free, and the quote is a fixed number rather than a starting point that grows on the night. Pricing starts at $385 for a single-hood kitchen and $725 for a multi-hood kitchen, with institutional and multi-tenant sites quoted after the walk-through.