Commercial kitchens — restaurants, bakeries, ghost kitchens, and central commissaries — accumulate baked-on grease and carbonized food residue faster than most operators want to admit. Traditional cleaning relies on caustic degreaser, soaking, hand-scraping, and pressure washing. Each method introduces problems the kitchen then has to manage: chemical fumes, wash-water in the grease interceptor, moisture in electrical compartments, and labor hours that get harder to staff every year.
Where dry ice fits in a kitchen scope
Dry ice blasting replaces the mechanical pre-clean step. It lifts baked-on carbon off oven crowns, fryer exteriors, deck-oven shelves, hood-adjacent stainless, mixer bowls, conveyor belts, and the backs of equipment that get skipped because nobody can reach them. We work overnight or on dark days, the kitchen reopens dry, and your normal sanitizer chemistry still runs on the food-contact pass.
Why no process water matters in a kitchen
- Electrical: ovens, fryers, mixers, and proofers have control boards that fail when moisture migrates into the housing — and that failure is rarely covered by warranty after a wash.
- Refrigeration: walk-in coil fins and condenser units degrade when pressure washing drives water and grease into the fin pack.
- Wash-water: every gallon you spray ends up either in the grease interceptor or on the floor; both create downstream cost.
- Drying time: a wet kitchen isn't a production kitchen — you lose hours every cleaning cycle to dry-down before sanitizer can be applied.
What a typical job looks like
We arrive after close, set containment around the work zone, run CO₂ monitoring, and work through the equipment list room by room. A typical mid-size restaurant runs 4–6 hours for a one-time deep clean; a bakery production hall typically runs a half- to full-day. We leave a photo log of each piece of equipment and the kitchen reopens dry and production-ready.
How to scope your kitchen
Send photos of the cooking line, the back of the hood, behind the fryers, and any equipment that hasn't been pulled out in 6+ months. We'll quote a half-day, full-day, or recurring monthly route depending on volume. Most multi-unit operators run a recurring monthly cadence per location.