What Restaurant Kitchen Hood Systems Do Best
When you are in the market for a kitchen hood system, it is important to know the needs of your kitchen. This way, you can select the hood system that will work best for your setup. Ultimately, you need to know that the hood system you choose will help your restaurant run cleaner and will protect your kitchen, staff, and customers from a potential grease fire.
A kitchen hood system for a restaurant is much different from one you would buy for your kitchen at home. You need a system that can handle and contain the amounts of grease, heat, and fumes that a commercial kitchen produces in an average day.
Our professionals at Ambient Edge can answer any questions you have before you ultimately settle on a system. With decades of experience in this business, we have seen it all here at Ambient Edge. Our wisdom can save you from making the same mistakes we have seen other customers make in the past when they selected commercial restaurant equipment that was not a good match for the needs of their business.
Types of Kitchen Hood Systems
When selecting a kitchen hood system, you need to consider whether your restaurant will be dealing in a lot of grease and smoke, or not. For example, a sushi restaurant has very different needs than the needs of a pizza or burger place where grease is a constant presence.
If you find yourself becoming overwhelmed when shopping for commercial kitchen hoods, remember that they all fall into two categories: those that pull grease and smoke from the air, and those that do not.
Exhaust Styles
Whether you are handling grease will influence the kind of exhaust ventilation style to go with, in a kitchen hood system. This should function as more of the deciding factor rather than how the hood will appear to your customers. If it is more visible, so be it, so long as it is doing its job and protecting your business and customers from a grease fire.
A ductless exhaust style is the easiest to install, which makes it one of the least expensive. However, a ductless system will not work as well if you have a lot of grease. Its function is to trap irritants, then recycle the filtered air back through your kitchen — kind of like an air conditioner.
Restaurants that deal with a heavy amount of grease typically need a vented exhaust style. Vented exhaust systems pull the exhaust out of the air and out of the restaurant entirely. Consider the last time you drove past a burger joint and saw that dark plume of smoke pouring from the roof. This is a vented exhaust system.
The Cost of Installation
As with anything else, the cost of installation for a kitchen hood system varies depending on how many bells and whistles you need. There are many options available on the market, depending on your needs.
If you would rather have a kitchen hood that is more visible but less complicated to install, you can opt for an under-cabinet or wall mount. The installation for this kind of system can run from $200 to $500. A cabinet insert is more attractive because it hides within your cabinets, and we can customize it to match. This installation can run from $500 to $1,000.
You can also opt for a downdraft kitchen hood, which inserts into the range and hides from view while you are not using it. Downdraft kitchen hoods can cost $1,000 or more to install. Once again, though, functionality is more important than appearance. You need to decide which system best meets the needs of your business — no matter how “ugly” it may look.
