Before the fire inspector opens an access panel, climbs to the roof, or runs a finger inside your canopy, they read one thing: the dated service sticker on your hood. It answers, in a glance, whether your kitchen is on its NFPA 96 schedule — and it sets the tone for everything that follows.
NFPA 96 puts every commercial kitchen on a cleaning frequency by grease production — monthly for solid fuel, quarterly for high volume, semi-annually for moderate, annually for low. The inspector knows roughly which tier your operation belongs in by looking at your line. A charbroiling, fryer-heavy kitchen with a nine-month-old sticker has announced a problem before anyone inspects a duct. Know your tier; keep the sticker inside it.
The sticker is the headline; the documentation is the story. NFPA 96 requires each cleaning to be recorded — company, date, areas cleaned, areas not cleaned and why, technician information, signed certification — and kept on premises for the AHJ. A sticker with no report behind it is a decoration. A complete binder with photos turns the inspection into a formality.
A current sticker from a wipe-down company means the canopy is clean and the duct isn’t. Inspectors know this pattern, which is why they look up, open panels, and check the fan. The 22% of restaurant fires NFPA attributes to failure to clean don’t start on the canopy. What compliant actually includes.
Know the tier. Book the schedule. Keep the binder at the manager’s station. And use a company that cleans the whole system and documents it — because the inspector’s first glance should be the easiest part of your day.
Lexington Hood Cleaning — Connecting Lexington restaurants and commercial kitchens with trained, insured kitchen exhaust cleaning companies.
Serving Lexington, Nicholasville, Georgetown, Versailles, Winchester, Richmond, Frankfort, and Central Kentucky.
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Information on this site is general guidance on NFPA 96 and commercial kitchen exhaust maintenance, not a compliance determination for your specific kitchen — your local fire authority makes that call. Lexington Hood Cleaning is a referral service and does not itself perform exhaust cleaning, inspection, or certification.