The typical restaurant setup
Most Sunshine Coast restaurants and cafes run one canopy, sometimes two, over a cooking line of a few metres. The duct runs up through the ceiling and either straight to a rooftop fan or along a horizontal section first. That horizontal section is common in shopping strips and older buildings and it is where the grease sits.
Because the system is small, the job is usually a few hours after close. Because the venue is often leased, the paperwork matters more than people expect.
Why restaurants get caught
Three situations bring most restaurant enquiries.
The council visit. Environmental health officers inspect food premises and ask about the exhaust. The question is usually "when was it last cleaned and do you have a record". A busy owner-operator who has been doing filters in the dishwasher and calling that cleaning does not have an answer.
The lease. Commercial leases on hospitality premises very commonly include a clause requiring the tenant to maintain the exhaust system, sometimes with a specified interval, and to hand it back clean at the end. That clause surfaces at renewal, at assignment when the business is sold, and at make-good when the tenant leaves. Each of those is a deadline.
The insurer. Renewal forms ask. Claims investigators ask harder.
The practical answer to all three is the same: a full system clean with a photographed report, on a schedule, with the reports kept.
Cooking type sets the interval
A cafe doing breakfast and sandwiches loads its system slowly. A restaurant doing charcoal grilling, wok cooking or heavy frying loads it fast. Solid fuel cooking, charcoal and wood, is in its own category and the standard treats it that way, with shorter intervals because of the ember risk as much as the grease.
If you are not sure where your kitchen sits, the honest test is the filters. If they are saturated inside a week, the system is loading fast.
Small kitchens, particular problems
- No access panels. Common in strip-shop fitouts and older buildings. The duct has never been opened because there is no way to open it.
- Shared roof. The fan may be on a roof shared with other tenancies, with access through someone else's premises or a locked hatch.
- Horizontal runs. A duct that runs across a ceiling to reach an external wall holds grease along its whole length.
- Mesh filters. Still common in older cafe fitouts and a poor flame barrier.
- Nobody knows the history. The business has changed hands and the previous owner left no records.
Any of those is worth mentioning when you call, because they change the job.
Scheduling around trade
After close is standard. For a cafe that shuts at three, the afternoon works. For a restaurant trading to late, it is after the last cover leaves. The kitchen needs to be cool and not cooking, and it is back to normal before the morning shift.
On the Coast, the smart move is booking the clean for the quiet weeks before school holidays rather than discovering it is overdue in the middle of them.
Check the current requirements before you rely on this
This page describes kitchen exhaust cleaning standards and practice as they stood in September 2026. Standards are revised, and what applies to a particular venue depends on its equipment, its building, its council and its insurer.
AS 1851 is published by Standards Australia at standards.org.au. Food premises requirements in Queensland sit under the Food Act 2006 and are administered by your council, Sunshine Coast Council at sunshinecoast.qld.gov.au or Noosa Council at noosa.qld.gov.au. Building fire safety is administered by Queensland Fire Department. Where anything here differs from those sources, they are right and we are not.
We are not fire engineers, council officers or insurers. For what applies to your venue, speak to your council's environmental health team, your insurer or a fire safety adviser.