Have you ever wondered about the different ways to avoid a restaurant kitchen fire? In many cases, it’s easy to overlook this while developing your business’s own fire action plan. Nevertheless, there are several simple strategies you can put into place to avoid a restaurant kitchen fire, and we’ve outlined several of these as follows to help.
Ways to Avoid a Restaurant Kitchen Fire
Kitchen fires can be absolutely devastating in many cases. However, if you have been facing these challenges, it’s well worth noting that there are several simple ways to stop a restaurant kitchen fire from breaking out. Some of the key strategies you should take include the following.
#1 Maintain All Equipment
The most vital factor in avoiding a restaurant kitchen fire is simple: ensure all equipment on your property is always maintained. Indeed, it’s easy to forget about this when there’s so much else to manage. Nevertheless, this can drastically increase the risk of a fire. Instead, frequent repairs can make a significant difference and reduce the chances of things going wrong.
#2 Clean Up Grease
Cooking grease can be incredibly flammable – and, in line with this, cleaning up all grease in a quick and timely manner is highly important. Ensuring your staff members prioritize this is important, reducing the risk of fires breaking out or spreading.
#3 Don’t Splash Grease When Putting Out Fires
When putting out a fire, one of the first things that often comes to mind is water. However, splashing water over a grease fire could allow the grease to splash. In turn, this can be a major issue, spreading the fire further despite efforts to put the flames out.
#4 Move All Flammables
Flammable items are common in restaurants. Where possible, moving or securing all flammable items away from high-risk appliances is highly important to protect your property.
#5 Watch Out for Electrics
Another major risk for fires to break out on your property is electrical systems. Any frayed or melted wires can represent a very significant risk factor, and poorly designed outlets may increase the danger further. As such, regular electric inspections can be important.
#6 Be Careful Around Cigarettes
If your staff regularly use cigarettes, it’s vital to ensure they are put out effectively and safely to prevent a fire from breaking out properly. Any cigarette butts dropped on dry materials have a high risk of going up in flame.
#7 Invest in Staff Training
One of the best steps you can take to ensure fires don’t become a major issue for your restaurant business is to simply invest in staff training. Giving your team access to education and guidance regarding fire safety measures helps equip them with the necessary knowledge to prevent problems from arising in your firm.
#8 Make Sure All Extinguishers are Working (Plus Backups)
Even with the best laid plans to avoid kitchen fire incidents, things can sometimes still go wrong – which is where it’s so vital to have fully working fire extinguishers in place. Your choice of fire extinguisher should cover the different types of fires that can break out.
Indeed, in many scenarios, there’s no single type of extinguisher, and each works a little differently. Thus, it’s so important to check that yours are working effectively before putting all your faith into a system.
#9 Ensure Sprinkler Systems Work
In many cases, a regular fire can be put out with water alone – and this is exactly where sprinklers come in! However, making sure the sprinkler systems are working and in good order is crucial to stop anyone getting caught out in the event of an emergency.
#10 Create an Escape Plan
As a final tip, ensure that your restaurant has an escape plan that can be readily rolled out in the event of a kitchen fire. A suitable emergency route should be easy to understand and readily accessible from any part of the property.
If a fire breaks out, it’s easier for staff and customers to avoid the kitchen fire and keep themselves safe. Since emergency escape plans will often also use fireproof materials, this can also help slow the spread of a fire, potentially causing less damage before the flames are extinguished.
Final Thoughts
Every business is unique. But when it comes to fire management and prevention, you can take several simple steps. Thereby, if you have been looking for ways to avoid a restaurant kitchen fire, make sure to consider some of the ten great tips we’ve outlined above to help.