You can find Commercial Cooking Equipment in a variety of businesses from restaurants to bakeries to soup kitchens and more. These locations can contain high-efficiency ranges, deep fryers, ovens, grills, and more. However, along with these commercial grade appliances come the additional risks of a fire. It is crucial to remember these essential fire safety tips to prevent fires from occurring in your kitchen.
Be Aware of Open Flames
Restaurants use an assortment of cooking techniques to prepare food. However, when butane, propane, or other fuel sources are used, it increases the fire hazard risks. To minimize your risk of a fire, ensure each employee has proper training with the equipment in use and any specific cooking techniques your kitchen uses.
Always Keep Your Kitchen Clean
When cooking, many appliances can generate grease and oil which could be fuel waiting to combust. By keeping your kitchen clean and organized, you can minimize the risk of a fire, as well as prevent kitchen fires from growing or spreading.
Create a Fire Safety Plan
One of the primary methods to keep your kitchen safe is to have a fire safety plan in place. This plan should include not only your evacuation plans and what each employee’s roles and responsibilities are but also a backup plan in case things don’t go as planned. You should ensure your employees are properly trained to:
• Appropriately use a fire extinguisher
• Shut off the electrical or gas power to the equipment in the event of an emergency
• Never use water to attempt to put out a grease fire
• Properly clean up grease and use chemical solutions
• Properly store flammable liquids
• Remove any ashes from charcoal or wood-ovens a minimum of once per day
Utilize Fire Suppression Systems
Every commercial kitchen should have some form of fire suppression system with a restaurant hood cleaning and sprinkler system. The system should include several backup fire extinguishers and chemical fire extinguishers (you should base the class of the extinguisher on the legal guidelines for the size of your business).
Regularly Clean Your Grease Traps
As touched on above, grease is an important substance to control when working in a kitchen. After all, a grease fire can spread through the entire kitchen quickly if not caught early. Therefore, you should make sure you regularly empty out your grease traps, replace your deep fryer grease, and keep the walls and hoods clean of all grease splatter that can accumulate.
Regularly Check the Fire Alarms
Changing the batteries in your smoke alarm is only part of the process. Afterwards, you need to continue with regular fire alarm testing. During sudden power surges, components within the device can cause it to work incorrectly. Smoke alarms should be tested after any power outages or significant surges.
Promptly Remove Trash and Packaging Materials From the Kitchen
Trash buildup is a fire hazard. Shipping materials and trash should be removed from the kitchen as soon as possible. Place the waste in the dumpster with the dumpster located far enough from your business that if it were to catch fire, it wouldn’t affect anything close to it. This is an especially important step because you cannot always control who has access to your business’ dumpster or other trash removal containers. Much of fire safety and prevention boils down to thinking ahead and reducing unnecessary risk.
For more tips on how you can prevent kitchen fires or for help in choosing the best commercial cooking equipment for your business, talk to the helpful associates at Gator Chef today by emailing info@gatorchef.com or by calling 1-888-944-2867 today!
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