Preventive maintenance for restaurants is a small register with an unforgiving schedule: a walk-in that fails on a Friday evening is a night's stock and a night's trade, and the kitchen cannot stop for a service in the middle of the week. The equipment is refrigeration, cooking lines, ventilation and grease extraction, dishwashing, and ice, and most of it is a trade's to repair. What the operation owns is the register, the daily and weekly checks, the schedule of the contractor visits, and the record. This page sets that out for a kitchen of any size.
The register a kitchen keeps
Every walk-in and reach-in refrigerator and freezer, with its temperature log. The cooking line: ranges, fryers, griddles, ovens, with their gas or electrical service dates. The extraction hood, fans and filters. The dishwasher and the water treatment feeding it. The ice machine. The hot water system. A dozen to forty assets, each with a make, a model, a location and the contractor who services it, is the whole register, and it fits the maintenance log worksheet on this site.
Daily and weekly tasks the kitchen does itself
Temperature checks on every refrigeration unit, twice a day, recorded. Door seals and drain lines on refrigeration, weekly. Fryer oil and filter, daily, and the fryer itself boiled out weekly. Hood filters cleaned weekly and the hood interior on a monthly interval. Dishwasher scale and rinse arms, weekly. Ice machine cleaned and sanitised on the manufacturer's interval, which is more often than most kitchens do it. Each is a checklist item with a space for the finding, and a finding is a call to the contractor before the failure.
Contractor visits on a schedule, not on a breakdown
Refrigeration service, hood and duct cleaning, gas appliance service, and fire suppression inspection are trades' work on intervals the insurer and the local rules set. The kitchen's job is to schedule them ahead of the due date, in the quiet hours, and to hold the certificate against the asset. A CMMS or the log raises the visit as a task with a lead time; a kitchen that waits for the contractor to call has a schedule the contractor owns.
The record, and why an inspector asks for it
Temperature logs, cleaning records, service certificates and the fire suppression inspection are what a health or fire inspector asks to see, and they are the same records the kitchen needs to run. Kept against the asset, with the date and the name, they answer the inspector in a minute. Kept nowhere, they cost the kitchen a finding, and the failure they would have prevented costs it a night.
Questions people ask about preventive maintenance for restaurants
Does a small restaurant need a CMMS?
A kitchen with a dozen assets can run on the maintenance log worksheet on this site. A group with several sites usually wants the software so that the schedule and the certificates are in one place.
Which restaurant equipment fails most?
Refrigeration, because it runs continuously and its failure mode is slow and hidden until the temperature log shows it. That log is the most valuable preventive task in the kitchen.
How often should the hood be cleaned?
The filters weekly by the kitchen; the hood and duct on the interval the fire code and the insurer set for the cooking done, by a contractor, with a certificate held against the asset.