Phoenix Journal · Kitchens
The easiest commercial kitchen to keep clean is one designed for it - with a reachable extract duct, wipe-clean surfaces and drainage that actually drains. Here is how to build cleanability in from the start.
Kitchen design & hygiene
The easiest kitchen to keep clean is one that was designed to be cleaned in the first place - long before the first pan ever hits the hob.
Most of the grief a cleaning crew inherits was baked in at the design stage: a duct run with nowhere to reach inside it, a floor with no fall to the gully, a canopy tucked so tight to the wall that nobody can wipe behind it. Once those decisions are set in stainless steel and screed, you live with them for the life of the kitchen - and pay for them every single deep clean.
Get the design right and the opposite happens. Grease has fewer places to hide, surfaces wipe down in minutes, and the parts that genuinely need a specialist - the extract duct above all - can be opened, inspected and cleaned to standard without cutting holes in your ceiling. Here is how to build that in from the start.
Work through these in order. The early ones shape the shell of the kitchen, so they are the hardest and most expensive to change later.
Daily wiping and end-of-shift degreasing keep the visible kitchen presentable, but some things sit beyond a cloth and a bottle of sanitiser - and those are exactly the parts your design has to make reachable. The extract duct is the clearest example. Grease builds inside it invisibly, and TR19 Grease sets the trigger for a clean-down at an average deposit of 200µm across the system, measured on site. If the duct has proper access doors, a specialist can test, clean and hand you a certificate with photographs. If it does not, the only options are expensive retro-fitted panels or cutting into the fabric - so build the access in now.
The same thinking applies to your local exhaust ventilation. Because the canopy captures airborne contaminants, it counts as LEV and falls under COSHH Regulation 9, which requires a thorough examination and test at least every 14 months by a competent engineer, in line with HSE guidance HSG258. A canopy you can reach around, filters that lift out in a housing designed for it, and grease gutters that drain to a removable cup all make that examination quicker and cheaper - and they make the daily clean something your own team can actually keep on top of.
It is also worth settling, at the design stage, who owns each of these jobs - especially in a leased or shared building, where the split between landlord and tenant is a common source of missed cleans.
Finally, do not treat any of this as a one-off. A kitchen designed for cleaning still needs a written routine that says what gets cleaned, how often, by whom and to what standard, tied to those 12-month inspection and 14-month test cycles. Setting that out as a ventilation cleaning compliance plan turns good design into evidence you can show an insurer or inspector. And remember the paperwork that comes first: you must register the premises with your local authority at least 28 days before you open for trade.
Cleanability is not a finish you add at the end - it is a set of decisions about access, surfaces, drainage and airflow that you either get right early or pay for repeatedly. Design the shell so grease has nowhere to hide and the specialist parts can be opened on demand, and the day-to-day clean becomes a routine your team can own rather than a battle they keep losing.
Questions
Making the extract system fully accessible. Grease builds up invisibly inside the duct and has to be cleaned to the BESA TR19 Grease specification, but that is only possible if hinged access doors are fitted at regular intervals along the run - roughly every two metres and at each bend and fan. Everything else, from surfaces to drainage, is easier to fix later than a sealed duct you cannot reach.
Smooth, impervious, non-toxic and washable materials, which is what retained food hygiene law requires for food-contact areas. Stainless steel and hygienic wall cladding are the usual choices because they have no grain or open seams for grease and bacteria to settle into. Avoid bare timber, porous grout and textured finishes in the cooking zone, and cove the junctions between floors, walls and equipment so there are no sharp corners to trap dirt.
Design reduces the effort but does not remove the legal cycles. Kitchen extract systems are generally inspected around every 12 months and cleaned when grease reaches the TR19 Grease threshold, while the canopy counts as local exhaust ventilation and needs a thorough examination and test at least every 14 months under COSHH Regulation 9. A good design simply makes each of those visits faster, cheaper and easier to pass.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Great equipment still needs a clean kitchen around it. Phoenix deep-cleans commercial kitchens to the standard an inspection scores - UK-wide, around your service.