The cost to deep clean a restaurant kitchen runs $300 to $800 for most restaurants, or roughly $0.50 to $1.00 per square foot the first time. A four person crew usually needs four to five hours at $50 to $150 an hour.
Published guides put the outer range anywhere from $200 to $5,000, which isn’t a typo and isn’t gouging.
It’s because “deep clean” isn’t one job. It’s four, and the cheap quote and the expensive quote usually contain different ones.
The cost to deep clean a restaurant kitchen, at a glance
| What you’re buying | Typical price |
|---|---|
| Janitorial kitchen deep clean, typical restaurant | $300 to $800 per session |
| Same clean, priced by the foot on a first visit | $0.50 to $1.00 per square foot |
| Larger or heavily soiled kitchen | $800 to $1,500 |
| Full restaurant deep clean including dining room | $1,500 to $5,000 |
| Pressure washing the kitchen | $250 to $500 or more |
| Oven or single appliance detail | $50 to $100 each |
Those numbers assume a kitchen on some kind of maintenance schedule. A kitchen nobody has degreased in a year is a different job with a different price, and no honest company will quote it from a phone call.
The two things that decide where you land inside the band are how much square footage the crew has to cover and how much grease is on it. Everything else is a rounding error.
The four jobs hiding inside one phrase
Ask three companies to deep clean your kitchen and you’ll get quotes that look unrelated. Usually they are, because each one priced a different bundle.
The janitorial deep clean is the one this article’s headline number describes. Hand degreasing of walls, equipment exteriors, shelving and the areas nightly service never reaches, plus a real floor scrub and everything moved and cleaned behind.
Hood and exhaust cleaning is a certified trade with its own standard, its own crew and its own paperwork. It is not janitorial work and reputable janitorial companies won’t pretend otherwise.
Grease trap service is a pumping contractor with a truck, a disposal manifest and a hauling fee.
Floor restoration is the fourth, and it’s the one people forget. Quarry tile with grease driven into the grout needs restoration, not mopping.
A $450 quote and a $2,800 quote for the same kitchen can both be honest. The first is the janitorial deep clean. The second bundled all four. The way to tell is to ask each company to itemize.
What is actually in the janitorial deep clean
This is the scope your money buys at $300 to $800, and it’s more than most owners expect.
- Hand degreasing of walls and ceilings in the cook line zone, where airborne grease settles and nightly wiping never reaches
- Equipment pulled out and cleaned behind and under, including the range, fryers, reach ins and prep tables
- Exteriors and interiors of cooking equipment: ovens, fryer cabinets, grills, flat tops, salamanders
- Hood filters removed, degreased and reset, which is the janitorial half of hood work and is not the same as cleaning the duct
- Walk in cooler and freezer, shelving out, floors and gaskets, condenser coils wiped
- Dish pit and three compartment sink, including scale removal and the sprayer
- Floor drains flushed and the drain covers pulled and scrubbed
- The floor scrubbed with a machine, not mopped, with the edges and corners done by hand
- Storage shelving emptied, wiped and reset
That list is why a deep clean takes 16 to 20 labor hours rather than the two or three a nightly visit runs. The arithmetic behind an hourly cleaning quote turns those hours into the price you’re quoted, and it’s worth checking the two numbers multiply out.
What is not in it, and what those jobs cost
Here’s where the quotes diverge. Each of these is real work by a different specialist, billed separately.
| Job | Who does it | Typical cost |
|---|---|---|
| Hood, duct and rooftop fan cleaning | Certified kitchen exhaust cleaning company | $400 to $800 per hood, national average around $600 |
| Grease trap pumping | Liquid waste hauler | $175 to $750 per visit, commonly $200 to $500 |
| Quarry tile and grout restoration | Floor care specialist | $0.50 to $1.55 per square foot commercial, $1 to $4 for grout restoration |
| Fire suppression system service | Fire protection contractor | Quoted per system, on its own inspection cycle |
| Dining room carpet or upholstery | Carpet cleaning specialist | Priced separately by area |
Hood and exhaust is the one that matters most, and it’s the one buyers most often assume is included. The fire code standard governing commercial kitchen exhaust requires the full path to be cleaned to bare metal, from the hood canopy through the ductwork to the rooftop fan, by trained and certified professionals. Your kitchen staff cannot clean and certify the system, and neither can a general janitorial crew.
The job ends with a certificate and a report, which is the practical reason it can’t be folded into a janitorial invoice. Your fire marshal and your insurer will both ask to see that document, and a line on a cleaning bill won’t satisfy either of them.
The stakes are why the standard exists. Eating and drinking establishments average around 7,400 structure fires a year, cooking equipment is involved in about 61 percent of them, and failure to clean is a contributing factor in roughly 22 percent.
If you see hood and vent cleaning priced at $80 to $150 on a janitorial quote, that’s filter service, not the duct. Read it carefully.
The first deep clean costs more, and why that’s fair
The first time a company deep cleans your kitchen, they’re not cleaning your kitchen. They’re cleaning however many months of buildup nobody addressed.
That’s the single biggest swing in the number, and it’s the reason quotes on a neglected kitchen come back so much higher than the published averages. Grease that’s been baked onto a wall through six months of service doesn’t come off in the same pass as grease from last week. It needs longer dwell time, stronger chemistry, more agitation and sometimes a second application.
The pattern holds on the exhaust side too: a system cleaned on schedule takes 30 to 40 percent less labor than one that’s been left, which is the same effect measured by a different trade.
Two practical consequences:
- Ask whether the quote covers the first clean or the steady state. A good company will price them differently and tell you what the recurring number becomes once the kitchen is caught up.
- The catch up premium is a one time charge. Once the kitchen is at baseline, later deep cleans land in the published range, and the gap between one every month and one every six months compounds against you.
If you already have nightly service, the deep clean is an addition to it, not a substitute. The nightly crew keeps the surfaces you can see in order; the deep clean handles what’s behind and above them. How often that second job needs to happen depends mostly on cooking volume, and it’s a schedule worth setting deliberately rather than reactively.
What moves the number
Five variables account for most of the spread between two honest quotes.
Square footage is the base. A deep clean priced by the foot lands around $0.50 to $1.00 on a first visit, and the rate per square foot falls as the building gets larger, so a small kitchen costs more per foot and less in total.
Condition is the multiplier, and it swings the number further than size does. Two kitchens of identical size, one maintained and one neglected for a year, can be a three times difference in labor hours for exactly the same task list.
Equipment count matters more than floor area in a tight kitchen. Six fryers, two flat tops and a charbroiler is a bigger job than an open room with a single range, even at the same square footage.
Floor type decides whether the floor is a cleaning job or a restoration job. Sealed quarry tile scrubs. Unsealed, grease saturated grout needs restoration and gets priced by the foot on its own.
Access window sets the crew size. A kitchen that has to be back in service by 6 AM needs more people working in parallel, which raises the total slightly even when the labor hours are identical.
Put together on a real building, they stack like this. Take a 2,000 square foot full service kitchen on a quarterly deep clean schedule, sealed quarry tile, one hood, a moderate equipment count:
- Janitorial deep clean at the low end of the per foot band, about $1,000 to $1,600
- Hood, duct and rooftop fan on its own cycle, about $600
- Grease trap on the 25 percent rule, about $300
- Floor restoration, not needed this cycle because the tile is sealed and maintained
Roughly $1,900 to $2,500 all in, arriving as three invoices from three companies. Change one input, unsealed grout saturated with grease, and the floor line alone adds $1,000 to $3,000, which is how a quote doubles without anybody padding anything.
How to buy a deep clean without guessing
Six things turn a vague quote into something you can hold a company to.
- Insist on a walkthrough before the price. A phone quote on a kitchen nobody has looked at is a guess, and it’s the most reliable warning sign in this trade.
- Get the quote itemized by job, not as one number. You want the janitorial deep clean, any floor restoration, and any specialty work on separate lines.
- Ask directly: is the hood and duct included, and if so who is certified to do it and will you receive the certificate.
- Ask whether this is the first clean price or the recurring price, and what the recurring number will be.
- Get the task list in writing, area by area, so “deep clean” means the same thing to both of you.
- Ask how many people for how many hours. Multiply it out and see whether the labor matches the price.
A company that answers all six directly has done this before. If the quote is one number and one sentence, you don’t yet know what you’re buying.
For most restaurants the cleanest arrangement is to fold the deep clean cadence into the recurring agreement, so it happens on a schedule rather than after a bad inspection. That’s a normal part of how monthly cleaning contracts get priced, and it costs less than buying each deep clean as an emergency.
Getting a real number for your kitchen
Local pricing sits in the lower half of every national band on this page. Labor is most of a cleaning bill. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the mean hourly wage across all occupations in the Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton metro at $26.59 as of May 2024, against $32.66 nationally, roughly 19 percent below.
Excellence Janitorial Services has been deep cleaning restaurant kitchens across Northeast Pennsylvania for more than a decade. We’ll walk your kitchen, tell you plainly which parts of the job we handle and which belong to a certified exhaust or grease trap contractor, and price it line by line so you can see exactly what you’re buying. Estimates are free with no obligation. Call (800) 851-0806 and we’ll come look.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to deep clean a restaurant kitchen?
Most restaurants pay $300 to $800 for a janitorial kitchen deep clean, or roughly $0.50 to $1.00 per square foot on a first visit. Larger or heavily soiled kitchens run $800 to $1,500, and a full restaurant deep clean including the dining room can reach $1,500 to $5,000. Confirm what the quote covers, since hood, grease trap and floor restoration are usually billed separately.
What is included in a restaurant kitchen deep clean?
Hand degreasing of walls and ceilings in the cook line zone, equipment pulled out and cleaned behind and underneath, and ovens and fryers cleaned inside and out. Then hood filters removed and degreased, the walk in emptied and cleaned, the dish pit descaled, floor drains flushed with the covers pulled, and the floor machine scrubbed with the edges done by hand. It is the work nightly service can’t reach, not a longer version of nightly service.
Is hood cleaning included in a restaurant deep clean?
Usually not, and you should assume not unless it’s written down. Cleaning the full exhaust path to bare metal, from the hood canopy through the ductwork to the rooftop fan, is a certified trade under the fire code and produces a certificate your fire marshal and insurer will ask for. A janitorial deep clean typically covers the filters and the hood exterior. A single hood service runs $400 to $800 with a national average near $600.
Does a deep clean include the grease trap?
No. Grease trap service is a liquid waste hauler with a truck and a disposal manifest, and it runs $175 to $750 a visit, most commonly $200 to $500. Some cleaning companies will coordinate it for you as a pass through, which is convenient, but it should still appear as its own line on the quote rather than disappearing into a bundled number.
How long does it take to deep clean a restaurant kitchen?
Four to five hours with a four person crew for a typical restaurant, which is 16 to 20 labor hours. Larger kitchens, heavy equipment counts, and any kitchen that hasn’t been deep cleaned in several months take longer. Ask for the crew size and the hours, not just the total, so you can check the labor against the price.
Why are restaurant deep cleaning quotes so different?
Because the phrase covers four separately priced jobs and each company assumed a different bundle. One quoted the janitorial deep clean alone, another added hood and duct, grease trap and floor restoration. Both can be honest. Ask every company to itemize by job and the quotes become comparable in about five minutes.
How often should a restaurant kitchen be deep cleaned?
Monthly is the common professional recommendation for a working kitchen, with high volume operations needing it more often and low volume kitchens stretching further. Letting it go past 30 days raises the cost of each visit, since buildup compounds and every later clean carries catch up labor. Cooking volume, not calendar preference, should set the schedule.
Do I still need a deep clean if I have a nightly cleaning service?
Yes. Nightly service handles surfaces, floors, restrooms and trash, all of it the work a room needs to open again tomorrow. A deep clean handles what’s behind, above and inside the equipment, which nightly crews don’t have the time or the chemistry for. The two are additive, and a good recurring contract names the deep clean cadence and its price rather than leaving it to be ordered in a panic.
Why is the first deep clean more expensive?
Because the first clean removes however many months of buildup accumulated before you called. Baked on grease needs longer dwell time, stronger chemistry and more passes than fresh soil, and that catch up labor can push a first visit well past the published averages. It’s a one time premium: once the kitchen is at baseline, later deep cleans land in the normal range. Ask for both numbers up front.
Should a restaurant deep clean happen after closing?
Almost always. Deep cleaning means equipment moved, strong degreasers in use and crews working across the whole floor, none of which can share a room with service. Surfaces also need time to dry and the space needs to ventilate before food touches anything again. Expect the crew overnight or early morning, and expect a slightly higher labor cost for the shift.