Commissary Kitchen Hood Cleaning San Diego: NFPA 96 for Shared Use and Ghost Kitchens
Food truck commissaries, ghost kitchens, and caterer share kitchens all run cooking equipment under a hood, which means all of them fall under NFPA 96. Core Hood Cleaning services commissary facilities across San Diego County with documentation built for every tenant on the lease.
In This Guide
A commissary kitchen looks like nothing and everything at once. From the street it might just be a warehouse with a loading dock and a few trucks parked outside. Inside, it can be running six or eight cooking operations at once, each one belonging to a different business, each one legally responsible for a share of the same exhaust system.
Growing up working in restaurants, I never worked a commissary myself, but I have serviced enough of them to know they get overlooked. Fire marshals and health inspectors do not overlook them. A commissary that skips scheduled hood cleaning is not putting one restaurant at risk, it is putting every tenant that lists that address as their base of operations at risk. This guide covers what makes commissary compliance different, who is actually responsible for the hood, and what a proper cleaning service for a shared facility looks like.
What a Commissary Kitchen Is
A commissary kitchen is a licensed commercial kitchen facility that more than one food business shares. In San Diego County, the term covers a wide range of setups: a warehouse where a dozen food trucks park overnight and prep before their routes, a shared use kitchen that rents time blocks to caterers and small food brands, and increasingly, delivery only ghost kitchen buildings where several restaurant brands cook out of the same address without a public dining room.
What ties all of these together is the same thing that ties any restaurant to the fire code: cooking equipment running under a hood, producing grease laden vapor that has to travel through ductwork and out a rooftop fan. The business model on paper does not matter to NFPA 96. The hood does.
Why Commissaries Face Extra Compliance Pressure
A single restaurant runs one kitchen on one schedule. A commissary can have several tenants cooking on staggered shifts, sometimes back to back for eighteen or twenty hours a day. Every one of those cook cycles adds grease to the same duct run. A hood that would need quarterly service in a low volume restaurant can easily need it more often once you account for four or five tenants sharing the same exhaust path.
NFPA 96 in a Shared Facility
NFPA 96 does not write a separate chapter for commissaries. It applies to the hood, the filters, the ductwork, and the rooftop fan the same way it would in any commercial kitchen. What changes in a shared facility is the scale and the record keeping. A commissary with three hoods serving different zones of the building needs each hood tracked on its own service schedule, with its own certificate and its own sticker, because an inspector walking the building will check each one individually.
Cleaning frequency still follows the same NFPA 96 table based on cooking volume and equipment type, but volume in a commissary has to be calculated across every tenant using that hood, not just the operator running the building. A commissary that treats itself like a low volume kitchen because no single tenant cooks that much, while several tenants combined cook constantly, is setting itself up to fail an inspection.
What we check on a commissary walkthrough
- →How many hoods are in the building and which tenants feed into each one
- →Combined cooking hours across all tenants sharing a single duct run
- →Whether the rooftop fan and duct access panels are reachable given the building layout
- →Whether any prior cleaning skipped the ductwork or the fan to save time
- →Whether documentation exists for every hood, or just the one the operator remembered
Who Is Responsible: Operator or Tenant
In nearly every commissary we have worked in, the building operator holds the health permit and the lease on the fixed exhaust equipment, which puts hood cleaning responsibility on them, not on individual tenants. That said, we tell every operator the same thing: put it in writing. A tenant agreement that spells out who schedules and pays for hood cleaning, how often it happens, and where the documentation is kept saves everyone a headache the day an inspector shows up asking questions.
Tenants are not off the hook either. A food truck operator whose commissary agreement lists an address with a lapsed cleaning certificate can have their own mobile food facility permit questioned, even though they do not own the hood. If you rent commissary space, ask to see the current certificate. It protects your business as much as it protects the building.
Ghost Kitchens and Cloud Kitchens
Ghost kitchens and cloud kitchens are commercial kitchens built to fill delivery orders, with no dining room and sometimes no public facing storefront at all. San Diego has seen a steady rise in these facilities, often with several restaurant brands, sometimes run by the same operator, cooking out of the same address behind different delivery app listings.
None of that changes NFPA 96. A fryer is a fryer whether the food leaves through a front door or a delivery driver's insulated bag. We have found that ghost kitchen operators sometimes assume less foot traffic means less fire code scrutiny. It is the opposite in our experience. A building running multiple brands out of one kitchen tends to run equipment nearly around the clock, which pushes cleaning intervals shorter, not longer.
What Commissary Hood Cleaning Covers
A proper commissary service is the same full NFPA 96 scope you would want in a standalone restaurant, applied to every hood in the building. For a multiple tenant facility, we also organize the paperwork by hood and by zone so the operator can hand an inspector exactly the record they ask for, not a stack of unsorted receipts.
This is also where a filter exchange program earns its place in a commissary. With several tenants running equipment daily, filters load up with grease far faster than in a single restaurant, and a filter exchange between full cleanings keeps airflow where it needs to be without waiting for the next scheduled service.
Choosing a Hood Cleaning Partner for a Shared Kitchen
Not every hood cleaning company wants to take on a commissary. Multiple hoods, tenants coming and going on different leases, and paperwork that has to satisfy more than one permit is more coordination than a single restaurant job. I know operators want a partner who shows up on a schedule that works around the building, not one that treats a twelve hood commissary the same as a single hood taco shop and rushes through it.
Ask any company bidding on your commissary how they document multiple hoods, whether they schedule around your busiest tenant hours, and whether they have serviced a shared facility before. If a company cannot answer clearly, that is a sign they will treat your commissary like a one off job rather than a recurring account that needs consistent recordkeeping.
Our full hood cleaning service and NFPA 96 inspection support both scale to multiple hood buildings, and we schedule commissary work around your tenants' hours rather than forcing a shutdown during peak prep time.
Running a Commissary or Shared Kitchen?
We service multiple hood facilities across San Diego County with documentation organized by hood, scheduled around your tenants, and built for the inspectors who will actually check it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a commissary kitchen and does it need hood cleaning?
A commissary kitchen is a licensed commercial kitchen facility that multiple food businesses share, including food truck operators, caterers, ghost kitchen brands, and pop up vendors. Any commissary running cooking equipment under a hood, whether it serves one tenant or twenty, falls under NFPA 96 and needs the same scheduled hood cleaning as a standalone restaurant.
How is a commissary kitchen different from a single restaurant kitchen for compliance purposes?
A single restaurant has one operator, one set of equipment, and one party responsible for the exhaust system. A commissary can have several tenants running different cooking equipment under the same hood or under multiple hoods in the same building, often on staggered schedules. That means more grease volume, more equipment types feeding the same duct run, and more people who need to see proof that the system is clean.
Who is responsible for hood cleaning in a shared commissary, the operator or each tenant?
In almost every case it is the commissary operator, since they hold the health permit and the lease on the building and its fixed exhaust equipment. That said, tenant agreements should spell out cleaning responsibility clearly, and every tenant should know the cleaning schedule and be able to produce documentation if their own permit is inspected separately.
Does NFPA 96 apply to ghost kitchens and cloud kitchens?
Yes. A ghost kitchen or cloud kitchen is a commercial kitchen built to serve delivery only orders, and it runs the same fryers, ranges, and flat tops as any restaurant kitchen. NFPA 96 does not care whether customers ever walk through the door. If there is a hood over cooking equipment, the fire code applies.
What does San Diego County require for a commissary permit?
Mobile food facilities such as food trucks and carts are required to operate from an approved base of operations, commonly called a commissary, under California retail food code. The commissary itself needs its own health permit and fire code compliance, including a documented hood cleaning schedule for any cooking equipment on site. Requirements can vary by facility type, so confirm current specifics with San Diego County Environmental Health and the local fire marshal.
How often should a commissary hood be cleaned with multiple tenants using it?
NFPA 96 sets cleaning frequency by cooking volume and equipment type, not by tenant count, but a shared facility with several tenants cooking on staggered shifts often accumulates grease faster than a single restaurant running the same hours. Many commissaries end up on a quarterly or even monthly schedule once real volume across all tenants is accounted for.
Can food truck operators use my commissary as proof of compliance?
A mobile food facility operator typically needs a signed commissary agreement plus proof that the commissary itself is properly permitted and maintained, including current hood cleaning documentation if the commissary has cooking equipment under a hood. As the commissary operator, keeping your certificate current protects every truck and cart that lists your address as their base.
What documentation does a commissary operator need on file for the fire marshal?
The same package any commercial kitchen needs: a written service report for each cleaning, before and after photos, a current NFPA 96 compliance certificate, and a sticker on the hood showing the last service date. With multiple tenants and possibly multiple hoods, keep records organized by hood or by zone so an inspector can match documentation to the exact equipment they are looking at.