Retention & Reminders for Ventilation Engineers
Their insurance company is doing your selling for you.
Someone else creates the demand — you just have to catch it
A commercial kitchen extract system to DW172 is £6,625. An MVHR installation, £2,390. A duct clean, £515. A Part F bathroom extractor, £420. A kitchen extract fan, £295.
The duct clean is the one that matters, and it’s unusual: the demand for it isn’t created by you, or by the customer, but by their insurer. Grease build-up in commercial kitchen extract is a fire risk, and insurers require documented cleaning on a cycle that depends on how heavily the kitchen is used.
That means your customer has to have it done, has to have the certificate, and can’t quietly skip it without a conversation with their broker.
You are selling something the customer is already obliged to buy. That’s a rare position and most ventilation companies do very little with it.
The pattern is the same as elsewhere: install once at £6,625, then clean on a cycle at £515 for as long as that kitchen operates. A busy restaurant might need it several times a year. Over a decade the cleaning substantially outweighs the installation — and there’s very little competition for it, because most ventilation firms are focused on installation work.
What this service actually does
Every extract system on record with its cleaning cycle. Site, kitchen type, cooking volume, ductwork detail, last clean, next due. Cycles vary by usage, so the schedule has to be per-site rather than a blanket annual.
Reminders that reach the right person. Restaurant managers turn over quickly. Head office may hold the insurance requirement while the site manager books the work. Getting both on the reminder matters more in your trade than most.
Certificates with photographic evidence, same day. This is the deliverable. Your certificate goes to their insurer and it’s what proves compliance. Grease-depth readings and before-and-after photos make it genuinely valuable rather than a formality.
Alerts on overdue sites, which for you is both a lost-revenue signal and a genuine risk their insurer would want to know about.
A record of ductwork condition, which builds the case for remedial work and replacement.
What we’d actually build
The site register with per-site cleaning cycles based on actual usage, not a blanket schedule.
Reminders going to multiple contacts per site, because single-contact reminders in hospitality fail constantly.
Certificate delivery with photographic evidence attached automatically — that’s the product as far as the customer’s insurer is concerned, and doing it well makes you very hard to replace.
Overdue alerting, escalating to head office where there’s a group.
Then the remedial pipeline: access panel issues, ductwork condition, fan performance, all recorded so the bigger jobs come out of the cleaning relationship.
What it costs against what it returns
Flat Out is £199 a month — £2,388 a year.
One commercial kitchen extract installation to DW172 is £6,625. A single job covers nearly three years of marketing.
But the cleaning is the real number. Thirty-two dormant sites at around £900 a year of cleaning is £28,800 — twelve times the cost, from kitchens you’ve already worked in.
And your position is unusually strong, because the demand isn’t optional. Their insurer requires documented cleaning. The kitchen can’t quietly skip it. You are selling something the customer is already obliged to buy — the only question is whether the reminder comes from you or from a competitor who got organised first.
The multi-site effect makes it better again. Hospitality groups run several kitchens, and a group that trusts your certification for one site will hand you the rest. One restaurant done properly, with photographic evidence and same-day certificates, routinely becomes five.
That’s the return: recurring, insurance-mandated, and it expands sideways through groups. Very little else in ventilation work behaves like that.
What good looks like
Retention above 90% on contracted sites. Hospitality churn is real, but the sites that stay open should stay yours.
Zero overdue sites unflagged.
Certificates issued same-day with photographic evidence.
Multi-site groups expanding — one restaurant in a chain done well should lead to the rest.
The mistakes we see most
Blanket annual scheduling. A high-volume kitchen needs cleaning far more often, and under-servicing it is a risk you’ve documented yourself.
One contact per site. Hospitality staff turnover is the highest of any sector you serve.
Certificates without evidence. Photographs and readings make it a compliance document rather than a receipt.
Focusing only on installation. The cleaning is the annuity and it’s far less contested.
Not escalating overdue sites. If a group’s head office knew a site was overdue, they’d act — and you’d keep the contract.
What’s your site base worth?
Sites on record 80 · average annual cleaning value £900 · currently active 60%
48 active. The other 32 are worth £28,800 a year.
This is what Gaffer was built for
Every site on record with its own cycle. Reminders to multiple contacts automatically. Certificates with photos attached, generated and sent same-day, filed against the site. Overdue sites flagged by churn-risk. Recurring invoicing across contracted work.
Questions ventilation engineers ask
Cycles vary by site. Can that be handled?
That’s exactly why a per-site schedule matters rather than a blanket annual reminder.
Hospitality customers are unreliable.
They are. Multiple contacts and head-office escalation is how you deal with it.
Is the certificate really that important?
It’s the thing their insurer asks for. Make it good and you become difficult to replace.
What about domestic MVHR?
Growing, lower value, and largely unserviced. Worth building a register for as new-build stock ages — those systems will all need attention eventually and nobody is currently tracking them.
We mostly do installation work. Is the cleaning side worth building?
It’s the half that doesn’t disappear when construction slows. Installation is cyclical and competitive; cleaning is recurring, insurance-driven and largely uncontested. Most ventilation firms would be considerably more stable with the mix reversed.
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