Commercial kitchen equipment maintenance schedule: daily, weekly, monthly

Why do you need a maintenance schedule?

Commercial kitchen equipment works all day, at high temperatures, with water and grease. Scale, grease and dust build up slowly; a breakdown may appear suddenly one day, but the cause has often been there for weeks.

A schedule is the cheapest way to catch that build-up before it turns into a fault. It ties the work to a system rather than to a person: the checks get done even when shifts change.

What should be done every day?

• Combi oven: clean the cooking chamber with the programme or by hand, wipe the door gasket, leave the door ajar overnight.
• Dishwasher: drain the tank; clean the filters and the wash and rinse arms.
• Refrigeration: read and record the inside temperature, check that the doors close fully.
• Range, fryer, grill: clean once cooled, filter the fryer oil, empty the grill’s grease tray.
• Bain-marie: drain the water and dry the well.
• Ice machine: take ice only with the scoop, keep the scoop in a clean, dry place.
• Juicer: wash and dry the detachable parts, empty the pulp container.

What should be checked every week?

• Door gaskets on ovens, refrigerators and dishwashers: tears, hardening, coming out of the groove.
• The dishwasher’s nozzles and the detergent and rinse-aid hoses.
• Evaporator icing and the defrost water drain in refrigerators.
• Gas taps and knobs turning freely; any smell of gas.
• Ventilation openings behind and under the units staying clear.
• Water filter and softener indicators, softener salt.

What should be looked at every month?

• Dust and grease on refrigerator and ice machine condensers (if you can reach them, with a soft brush while the unit is switched off).
• Signs of limescale: white spots on dishes, slow steam in the oven, cloudy ice.
• A slow rise or fluctuation in the temperature logs.
• Recurring warnings and error codes on the displays.
• Extractor hood grease filters (more often in busy kitchens).

What happens at a scheduled technical service?

Scheduled maintenance covers the measurements and adjustments your kitchen team cannot do. How often it is needed depends on the type of unit, how hard it is used, the water hardness and the manufacturer’s recommendation; every 3–6 months is a common starting point for most units.

• Combi oven: descaling of the steam generator; measurement of heating elements, sensors and fan; calibration.
• Dishwasher: descaling of the boiler and heating elements, temperature measurement, dosing adjustment.
• Refrigeration: deep cleaning of the condenser, refrigerant pressure and leak check, defrost test.
• Gas appliances: leak check, flame adjustment, thermocouple and ignition test.
• Ice machine: descaling and sanitising, filter replacement.
• Juicer: check of wearing parts, seals and mechanism.

Every job ends with a written service report: symptom, diagnosis, work done and test result on one page. Keeping the reports makes it easier to follow each unit’s history.

For seasonal hotels: before the season opens

In seasonal hotels in Antalya, the kitchen can stay closed for months. In units that stand unused for a long time, gaskets dry out, sediment and bacteria build up in water circuits and small faults go unnoticed.

• A few weeks before opening, switch every unit on and test it, so any fault shows up before the busy period starts.
• Have ice machines and units with water circuits sanitised and replace the water filters.
• Start the refrigerators early enough to see them reach their target temperature before you load products.
• Have gas appliances leak-checked and their flames adjusted.

At the end of the season, cleaning and drying the units, draining the water circuits as the manufacturer instructs and leaving the doors ajar also makes the next opening easier.

How do you put the schedule into practice?

• Prepare a one-page checklist for each unit and hang it next to the unit.
• Give the daily tasks to the shift supervisor and the weekly and monthly checks to one named person.
• Keep the temperature logs and service reports in the same folder.
• Keep the manufacturers’ manuals somewhere easy to reach; the values and intervals are written there.

When should you call a technical service?

In these cases, stop the checks, switch the unit off and call a technical service:

• A smell of gas (first close the valves and ventilate the area; for natural gas, call the 187 natural gas emergency line in Türkiye).
• The circuit breaker or a safety thermostat tripping again and again.
• A burning smell, sparks or cables getting hot.
• A refrigerator that cannot hold its target temperature.
• The same error code coming back again and again.