HoodProof

Idea

A buyer-side audit binder that checks whether the restaurant's hood cleaning vendor actually did the job.

Restaurant operators with 2 to 20 locations upload or forward the vendor's service reports and photos. HoodProof checks each job against NFPA 96 documentation requirements, tracks next-due dates per location, and builds a binder a fire marshal or insurer will accept.

Market gap

Every tool in this space is built for the cleaner. Essential, ServiceTrade and similar platforms help hood cleaning contractors issue certificates and photos. Nothing helps the restaurant verify the work.

A sticker or an invoice proves a billing event, not that the ducts, plenum and rooftop fan were cleaned. Fire inspectors do not open duct runs. Insurers, however, can look for a records gap after a fire. Hood Safe, a hood cleaning contractor, lists hiring mistakes restaurants make, and a Fall River cleaner was jailed for forged certifications and surface-level cleaning. Timing: NFPA 96 inspection and documentation expectations are being tightened by insurers, and vision models can now read a photo set and a service report for missing areas cheaply.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up, per location per year.

• Independent restaurants in the US: 412,498 at end of 2025 (Technomic, via Nation's Restaurant News).
• Assumption: 80 percent have a commercial cooking hood and exhaust system (own estimate, not sourced) = about 330,000 locations.
• Assumption: price of $29 per location per month = $348 per year.
• TAM = 330,000 x $348 = about $115M per year.

SAM: operators with 2 or more locations or an insurer or lender requiring proof, assumed 20 percent of the TAM locations = 66,000 x $348 = about $23M per year.

SOM: 1,000 paying locations by month 18 = about $348K ARR. At 100 operators averaging 10 locations, that is a realistic reach for a founder-led, bottom-up sales motion.

The chain-store segment is excluded: large chains already run Crunchtime, Zenput or in-house facilities teams.

Monetization strategy

Per-location monthly subscription paid by the restaurant operator. They keep paying because the binder is live: each new vendor job updates the audit trail, and due dates and reminders run continuously.

Secondary revenue later: insurer or broker partnerships, where an agency pays for portfolio-wide visibility into hood cleaning status across insured restaurants.

Pricing strategy

• Free: one location, last three jobs, manual upload only.
• Starter, $29 per location per month: unlimited jobs, forwarding email inbox, completeness check, due-date reminders, PDF binder export. Entry point.
• Operator, $49 per location per month: adds vendor scorecards, a cross-location dashboard, and a shared read-only link for insurers and fire marshals.
• Anchor: the $2,000+ fine and temporary shutdown a Detroit restaurant reportedly faced after a failed inspection, and a $340,000 loss with claim denial in a reported Hartford case. A $348 per year per location policy is cheap against both.

Rationale: restaurants pay hood cleaners roughly quarterly or semi-annually, so a per-location monthly fee reads as a small add-on to an existing vendor cost.

Lead magnet

A free "Hood Cleaning Vendor Report Grader": upload one past service report and photo set, get a one-page score showing which NFPA 96 items are documented, what is missing (for example, no "areas not cleaned" entry, no rooftop fan photo), and the next-due date. Result in under two minutes, no signup for the first grade.

Social proof that the problem exists

• A Tacoma pizzeria had a hood sticker showing a June cleaning while fire marshals informed the owner that semi-annual hood system servicing was overdue: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iconic-tacoma-pizzeria-karaoke-bar-123000415.html
• Hood Safe lists mistakes restaurants make hiring a cleaner, including a Detroit restaurant that failed a fire inspection after a budget cleaner only wiped the canopy and filters: https://hoodsafe.us/5-mistakes-restaurants-make-when-hiring-a-hood-cleaning-company/
• A kitchen hood cleaner was jailed in Fall River after forging certifications and doing surface-level cleaning: https://bayareahoodcleaning.com/local-scam-fraudulent-kitchen-hood-cleaner-jailed-in-fall-river
• A hood cleaning contractor forum thread where cleaners describe being blamed for duct fires while documenting inaccessible and non-code ducts, showing documentation disputes after fires: https://propowerwash.com/board/upload/threads/nfpa-96-fire-code-questions.13510/
• Insurance Alliance explains how restaurant equipment maintenance gaps lead to claim denials: https://www.theinsalliance.com/post/7-mistakes-you-re-making-with-restaurant-equipment-maintenance-and-how-to-avoid-claim-denials
• Zurich risk guidance reports that failure to clean was a factor in 22 percent of restaurant structure fires, about 1,650 of 7,410 per year: https://riskadvisor.zurich.com/documents/rt_Cooking_VentilationControl.pdf
• Massachusetts state fire services published a document titled "Complaints on Hood Cleaning Work" (listed in search results; content not retrieved): https://www.mass.gov/doc/complaints-on-hood-cleaning-work-112013/download

Competitors

• Essential (withessential.com): fire protection and hood cleaning software for contractors.
• ServiceTrade: field service and fire inspection software for contractors.
• Kitchen Guard: franchised hood cleaning service provider.
• Restaurant checklist and compliance tools such as Zenput and FoodDocs: operator-side food safety checklists.

What competitors offer now

Essential offers frequency set per site by NFPA 96 class, before and after photos taken by the tech, an "areas not cleaned" field the tech cannot skip, and a certificate issued before the truck leaves. That is contractor-side software: the restaurant only receives what its own vendor chooses to generate, and only if the vendor uses it.

ServiceTrade covers scheduling, inspection forms and deficiency quoting for contractors. FoodDocs publishes a hood cleaning poster and checklist, but it does not ingest vendor reports.

None of these ingest reports from an arbitrary vendor, check them for completeness, or give the operator a cross-vendor, cross-location binder.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Be vendor-agnostic and sit on the buyer side. The operator does not need the vendor to adopt anything: forward the PDF or photos to a dedicated inbox and HoodProof does the checking.

Distribution: insurance brokers and agents who write restaurant policies (they care about protective safeguards exclusions), independent restaurant groups through multi-unit operator communities, and the free report grader as the entry point. Hood cleaning contractors can also refer their customers: a compliant vendor looks better when verified.