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How to Get Rid of Cooking Odors in Commercial Facilities
Friday, October 11, 2024
odor control
How to Get Rid of Cooking Odors in Commercial Facilities
On their own, certain dishes can smell great—but unfortunately, any lingering food smells can interfere with a business’ professional atmosphere. As cooking odors get old and combine with other food smells, your facility starts to become more and more reminiscent of a cluttered fridge—old takeout boxes, suspicious Tupperware, freezer burn, and all.
Your goal above all is for guests to be comfortable in your facility, whether it’s an apartment, condo, hotel, school, or restaurant. But with constant, evasive odors in your space, this can feel unattainable.
At State Industrial Products, we manufacture and distribute chemical solutions for various purposes, including odor control. When your facility smells bad, it deters customers and causes you discomfort and frustration. You just want the quickest and most effective solution, but what will that be for you?
To help you eliminate your facility’s food odors, we’re going to explain common problem areas, different treatment methods, and how this will look for your facility in the long run. After reading, you’ll know how to get rid of food odors in your facility—and how to keep your facility smelling fresh thereafter.
Where Do Commercial Cooking Odors Commonly Gather?
The first step to eliminating food odors is understanding where they come from and where they linger.
It’s a given that food odors come from cooked food.
Food odors might occur in an apartment complex, where different units’ food scents coalesce in the hallway, creating a monstrous combination of tuna casserole, onions, burnt popcorn, and broccoli.
These food smells may be in a school, where the sickeningly sweet odor of years’ worth of old grease trails from the cafeteria into the hallways, the classrooms, and the gymnasium.
They could become a problem in a restaurant, where old frying oil and fallen food scraps become a rotting scent that lingers thick in your nostrils.
There are possibilities for food odors anywhere there is food, but odors may persist in certain areas more than others.
In some cases, food odors will simply remain in open spaces. This will be especially common in kitchens and other places where food is frequently present. In these cases, you’ll need to look at ambient solutions for a whole room.
However, there are also times when food odors intertwine themselves with a specific spot. For example, a hotel room with a kitchen may see food odors trapped in its furniture over time. The same can happen to any fabrics, linens, carpets, or other textiles that come into frequent (or severe) contact with food odors.
Just imagine if a guest were to fry fish in one of these rooms. Chances are that the bedding, the mattress, the couch, and the carpeting will take on an oily, fishy odor. This is where you’d need to focus odor treatment on those specific areas—potentially even in addition to treating the room as a whole.
Additionally, items such as waste disposal bins that frequently see food will absorb a certain odor. Just think about a grocery store throwing out leftover rotisserie chickens, spoiled eggs, and rotten vegetables. These dumpsters will take on an earthy, putrid smell that really won’t be ideal for workers or passersby.
Overall, food odors can permeate through virtually any space or object. Now that you know what category your odor falls under, you’re ready to learn how to best treat it.
How to Eliminate Cooking Odors in a Commercial Facility
Depending on the location of your food odor, you have several different options to eliminate it.
To continuously control cooking odors throughout a room—or even throughout your entire facility—use an ambient scent diffuser. This is a consistent, facility-wide solution where an automated system eliminates odors and adds a pleasant fragrance throughout the space. When you generally have cooking odors throughout an area, this is a perfect hands-off solution that will keep running even if you don’t think about it.
Meanwhile, if your problem area is a more specific object or area, try spot treatment. For small rooms or those with mild or infrequent odors, this may involve using a handheld air freshener as a quick, effective solution. For food odors burrowed deep into fabrics and textiles, this will mean spraying them once a week with a fabric refresher. For trash can odors and odors specific to a piece of equipment, the solution is likely an odor-eliminating spray.
In many cases, specific problem areas will have solutions specifically crafted for them. Look into odor elimination intended for your issue and you’ll yield successful results.
For severe, persistent cooking odors, the most comprehensive solution is to combine ambient scenting with spot treatment. This way, you’ll eliminate stubborn malodors at the source while also proactively fragrancing the space as a whole. This ensures consistency as well as the effective elimination of powerful odors.
What works best for you will depend on your individual space, but generally, these will be your main options for controlling cooking odors.
Long-Term Cooking Odor Elimination in Commercial Businesses
Long-term elimination of cooking odors will involve changing your approach as needed.
To treat severe cooking odors, you might start with spot treatment and ambient scenting, but as time goes on and the odors fade, you might switch to only ambient scenting—or to only occasional spot treatment. It all depends on the development of your situation.
Approach odor control as your facility needs it, and if the odors change over time, change your approach to account for that.
When you eliminate food odors, facility visitors will likely view you as more welcoming and professional. If you walk into a restaurant and your first thought is, “Wow, it smells like old cooking oil,” you probably won’t eat there again—you might even walk out after arriving.
Meanwhile, if you walk into a restaurant that smells clean or like freshly grilled food, you’ll probably think it seems nice. If you have a good experience beyond that, you’ll probably come back, but your initial impression will influence much of the decision.
Scent is a powerful trigger of memory and can significantly influence a person’s feelings about a space. When you choose to deodorize and fragrance your facility, you invest in your brand image.
Learn About How State Chemical Can Help You Get Rid of Cooking Odors
Cooking odors don’t always start out so bad, but when they intermix and linger, they become particularly unappetizing. Ambient scenting, spot treatment, and a combination of the two are great ways to deal with food odors in your facility—your chosen method depends on the surrounding situation.
To learn how State Chemical can help you eliminate food odors in your facility, watch the video below.
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