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What to put in a kitchen exhaust cleaning quote request

The quality of the quotes you get back tracks the quality of the details you send. A good request takes five minutes and saves a week of phone tag.

Include

• The address and borough, and anything unusual about access: walk-up, shared roof, loading dock hours, residential neighbors.
• The hood line: how many hoods and roughly how long, the cookline type (fryers, broilers, woks, pizza ovens), and whether there is a fire-suppression system over the line.
• Any exhaust add-ons: an electrostatic precipitator (ESP) unit, a pollution-control unit, or multiple fans.
• Your constraint: a required cleaning interval, an upcoming inspection, an insurance renewal, or a landlord requirement — this is often the real reason for the call, and good companies will plan around it.
• Photos if you have them (when emailing directly): the hood, the fan on the roof, and the duct access points if visible.

Leave out

• Building plans, alarm details, access codes, keys. A cleaner does not need them to quote, and you should not distribute them.
• Your budget. Say the scope, not the number — let each company price the same job.

Ask every company the same four questions

1. What exactly does the price include, and what would be extra?
2. What cleaning interval do you recommend for a line like mine, and why?
3. What documentation do we get after service — sticker, written report, photos, anything our insurer or the FDNY would want on file?
4. Is the crew that services the hood employed by the certificate holder?

The request form is built around these details, and the comparison organizer keeps the answers in one place. If a company will not answer the four questions in writing, treat that as information too.

Editorial guide, written 2026-09-19. It describes common practice in commercial kitchen exhaust servicing, not a code requirement; your equipment, lease, insurer, and the fire code govern your actual schedule.