In this article
A fryer, a grill and an extraction hood that run for years without ever actually catching fire isn't luck — it's a cleaning schedule somebody, somewhere, actually follows. Most kitchens don't have one: the hood gets cleaned when someone happens to notice it needs it, not because a calendar says so. That gap is exactly where a grease fire starts, and exactly what an insurer looks at once one does.
A kitchen fire rarely starts at the stove itself. Grease that vaporises off a fryer or a grill settles inside the hood and further down the duct — invisibly, layer by layer, week after week. Enough of those layers, and one overheated pan is no longer what it takes to ignite something: the buildup itself becomes the fuel, and the duct becomes the pipe that carries the fire through the rest of the building.
That is exactly why fire-safety consultants and insurers across Europe ask for the same one document after an incident: the certificate from the last professional clean. Not because the paper puts the fire out, but because it proves whether the buildup that fed it was ever supposed to exist in the first place.
Most independent operators don't think of that certificate as a recurring cost — they think of it as something that "gets added on" whenever the kitchen is already being worked on for something else. That's the gap this article closes: how much cleaning your kitchen actually needs, what that costs on a schedule, and what's at stake if you've never worked it out.
The calculator below takes your own frying hours, your current cleaning rhythm and your average daily revenue, and turns them into three numbers: how many cleans a year you're missing against your own usage, what a day of closure actually costs, and how many times bigger that exposure is than keeping the duct clean would have cost.
Why this starts at the extraction hood, not the fire brigade
Grease isn't dirt that happens to land on your extraction hood — it's a combustible layer that actively builds up for as long as warm, grease-laden air moves through it, and that happens every single service a fryer or grill runs. The more hours, the faster that layer gets thick enough to become fuel in its own right rather than just mess.
For an owner, that isn't an abstract risk — it's a bill with two sides. One side is the cleaning itself: a recurring, predictable cost you get to schedule yourself. The other side is what a fire costs if it happens anyway — days closed, repair work, a new inspection, and an insurer who asks for the maintenance record before anything gets paid out.
This article exists to put those two sides next to each other, with your own numbers — not to scare anyone, but to finally give a real amount to a cost most kitchens never budget for at all.
The 7 numbers behind your fire risk
Each of these seven numbers is its own dial that decides how big your real risk is — and together they're exactly the model behind the calculator further down.
1. A bit over 6 in 10 — the share of restaurant fires involving cooking equipment
The US NFPA has kept the most detailed public fire statistics for eating and drinking establishments for decades — there's no equivalent EU-wide dataset, but the ratio it turns up is exactly what European fire insurers see in practice too: cooking equipment (fryers, grills, ranges) is involved in a bit over six in ten restaurant structure fires, well ahead of electrical faults, heating or anything else in the building.
That number doesn't say cooking is dangerous. It says the kitchen — and specifically anything around the fryer and grill station — is where the odds are worst, and therefore exactly where maintenance pays off the most.
2. 12, 6, 3 or 1 month — the cleaning rhythm your usage decides
There's no single EU law that spells out exactly how often an extraction duct must be cleaned — but the UK's TR19 Grease specification, written by the ventilation-hygiene trade body, is the schedule fire consultants and insurers across most of Europe still reach for, simply because nothing better has replaced it. It runs on four usage bands: light use (annually), moderate use (every six months), heavy use (every three months), and very heavy use — a kitchen that runs close to round the clock — monthly.
This article uses a simplified version of those same four bands, tied to your own frying and grilling hours per week, as an illustrative guide rather than a literal legal text: under 10 hours a week is "light", 10 to 24 is "moderate", 24 to 48 is "heavy", and above that is "very heavy". The calculator further down uses exactly this split to work out how often your own kitchen should actually be cleaned.
Four usage bands, four cleaning rhythms — your kitchen sits somewhere in this row.
The more frying and grilling hours a week, the faster grease builds into a combustible layer — and the more often the duct needs clearing.
3. €0 — what an expired certificate is worth the day it matters
A cleaning certificate you got two years ago is worth exactly as much as no certificate on the day of an incident: it no longer proves anything about what has built up in your duct since. A growing number of European commercial policies carry a maintenance condition stating that a claim after a kitchen fire can be reduced or refused if you can't show the extraction was maintained on a reasonable schedule.
That doesn't mean an expired certificate gives "partial" cover that something else tops up. It means a kitchen with no current, dated proof of cleaning stands, as far as the claim is concerned, in exactly the same position as a kitchen that was never cleaned at all — with the one difference that the owner thought it was covered.
4. {missedCleanings} cleans a year you're missing against your own usage
A kitchen running 30 frying and grilling hours a week falls into the "heavy" usage band — a recommended clean every 3 months, or 4 times a year. A kitchen that only books a clean every 12 months gets 1 of those a year — a gap of 3 cleans that its own usage says should have happened.
That gap is rarely a deliberate choice. It's almost always simply never calculated: nobody has ever put the frying and grilling hours next to a cleaning schedule and checked whether the two still line up.
5. {annualCost} — what the usage-appropriate rhythm actually costs per year
At €350 per visit and 4 visits a year for a "heavy" usage band, the recommended rhythm comes to €1,400 a year — a recurring, predictable cost line you get to schedule yourself, the same way you schedule your insurance premium or your energy contract.
Compare that with what you actually spend on cleaning today: if it's lower than €1,400, you're not spending less because you're being efficient — you're spending less because the gap above exists.
6. {exposure} — what {closureDays} days closed costs in lost revenue
A kitchen fire serious enough to require intervention rarely closes a venue for a single day. Repair work to the extraction system, a new electrical and fire-safety inspection, and often a food-safety re-inspection before the kitchen can reopen, typically add up to a few weeks for most small and mid-sized venues — used here illustratively as 12 days.
At an average revenue of €1,800 a day, that adds up to an exposure of €21,600 — not the cost of the fire itself, just the revenue that disappears during that window, before repair costs, an insurance excess or reputational damage are even counted.
For the worked example above: €1,400 to stay clean, against €21,600 of revenue at risk from 12 days closed.
These aren't two options to choose between — they're two sides of the same bill. The left side is the cost you schedule yourself. The right side is the cost an insurer, a fire or an inspector schedules for you.
7. {returnMultiple}× — how much bigger that exposure is than staying clean would have cost
Put €21,600 of lost revenue next to the €1,400 the usage-appropriate cleaning rhythm costs per year, and the ratio comes out 15 times bigger. Put another way: the recommended cleaning schedule in this example costs less than one day of revenue a year — and it protects against an exposure equal to 12 days of revenue.
That's the number the calculator below works out for your own venue: not a scare figure, just a plain comparison between a cost you fully control and a cost that, on the day it matters, you no longer do.
Work out your own fire risk
Enter your own frying and grilling hours, your current cleaning rhythm and your average daily revenue. The tool works out which usage band your kitchen falls into, how many cleans you're missing against it, and how much bigger your exposure is than staying on schedule would have cost.
This is an illustrative model built on a simplified version of the TR19 Grease bands, not a substitute for advice from your own fire insurer or ventilation-hygiene contractor. For the exact cleaning schedule your kitchen and equipment actually need, a certified contractor on site is the only reliable source.
What's really at stake in your kitchen?
Enter your own numbers — the tool works out your usage band and calculates the gap and the exposure.
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An illustrative model built on a simplified TR19 Grease split, not an inspection report. For the exact schedule your kitchen needs: a certified ventilation-hygiene contractor on site.
What this produces is deliberately an indication, not an inspection report: every kitchen has its own mix of equipment, duct length and airflow, and a contractor on site can assess that precisely. What this model does get right is the ratio — a small, predictable cost against a much larger, unpredictable exposure — not the exact euros of your own kitchen.
Already have a quote or a schedule from your own contractor? Enter that amount under "what a clean costs you" instead of the default figure, and the tool immediately recalculates what the gap — and the exposure — actually mean for your venue.
Getting your fire risk in order: the plan
There's no grey area to sit in — just a schedule most venues have never written down, because nobody has ever put the frying and grilling hours next to a calendar.
Today
- Find out when your extraction duct was last professionally cleaned, and whether there's a dated certificate for it — not just a memory that "it happened".
- Add up your own frying and grilling hours per week and compare them against the four usage bands above.
This month
- Get a quote and a recommended schedule from a certified ventilation-hygiene contractor, specific to your equipment and duct length.
- Check exactly what maintenance condition your own policy carries, and what proof you'd need to show against a claim.
Ongoing
- Put the annual cleaning cost in your budget as a fixed line, next to rent and insurance — not as something that "gets added on".
- Keep every cleaning certificate dated and in one place, so you can produce it within a minute if an insurer or inspector asks.
The number that matters
A hood that "looks clean enough" says nothing about what's built up further down the duct — grease settles there invisibly, and that invisible part is exactly where most kitchen fires start.
The difference between a schedule that follows your usage and one that just "gets added on" is rarely the amount that closes a business on its own. It's the amount that, on the one day it matters, turns into a far bigger bill than any owner ever budgeted for — one an insurer can then also decline to pay.
Run the numbers with the tool above, get a quote from a certified contractor, and put the result next to your rent and your insurance — as a fixed cost you know, not a risk you catch up on later.