We do over 30 accounts
Here's a post I made:
Hood cleaning is at night, it's dirty and you will need a lot of stuff to get started. I have a 6x12 enclosed trailer with a hot water pressure washer setup mounted in it along with various tools and equipment. This trailer is for hoods and pressure washing jobs. I also have a small electric pressure washer my guys use on smaller or easier jobs.
Since we do a ton of restaurants I always ask if they need any other services. Hood cleaning was a very common one. Mostly because these large companies will get a ton of national accounts and just sub out the work to the smaller companies and pay them pennies...resulting in poor work. I knew I could get my guys to do a better job and started looking for a school that would certify me. It's a law, you must be NFPA 96 certified to clean hoods. Schools in my area wouldn't certify me due to competition, so you may run into those problems. No worries, someone will certify you that's not too far away.
A hot water pressure washer is a must. Don't worry about psi cause the most you will use is around 2000. This is where gpm comes in handy. We use pressure washer with 4gpm capabilities and it does the job and haven't had an issue. You can go higher gpm but the cost of the pressure washer will increase greatly. I would highly suggest 2 guys per job. This is standard for us because I like faster production times but mainly for security. Your initial startup cost will depend on the equipment you go with. I spent roughly 10k on hot water pw'er, trailer, tools, equipment, etc. I can give u a list of most of what you will need to do the job. Wrapping the hoods with plastic is probably the most time consuming at first. The better you wrap the hood the easier the job is and it also makes cleanup much easier! My guys wear full rain suits to keep from getting wet and dirty and they also wear 2 way radios so they can communicate when one is on the roof and other is on the line cleaning.
Typically hood prices vary. I won't touch a hood for less than $300. That's a single hood at a small location like sonic. Bigger restaurants like Applebee's, TGI Fridays, etc will get charged 550-650 depending on how frequent they want it cleaned. Asian restaurants we charge an extra $100 because the grease is a little harder to remove....I guess that's what happens when you cook cats.
