Restaurant cleaning services cost roughly $100 to $300 per nightly visit for most operations, which works out to somewhere between $800 and $9,000 a month depending on size and how many nights a week the crew shows up. Priced by area, general restaurant cleaning runs about $0.12 to $0.40 per square foot.
That’s a wide band, and the width is the useful part. The same 3,000-square-foot restaurant can sit near $2,000 a month or near $6,500 a month without either number being wrong. The difference is almost entirely frequency and scope. This guide breaks down where in the range you’ll land and why.
If you haven’t settled what you’re buying yet, start with how to choose a restaurant cleaning service, because the scope of work is what a quote is priced against, and comparing bids before you’ve written one is how operators end up with three numbers they can’t reconcile.
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The Bottom Line
- Per visit: $100 for a small cafe, $150–$250 for a typical mid-size restaurant, $300 and up for a large full-service kitchen.
- Per square foot: $0.12–$0.40 for general restaurant cleaning.
- Per month: $800–$3,000 for cafes and fast casual on a light schedule; $2,000–$9,000 for full service cleaned nightly.
- Hourly: commercial rates span roughly $20–$150 an hour depending on the work, with deep cleaning typically $50–$100.
- Frequency moves the total about three times as hard as square footage does. Going from two nights to seven roughly triples the bill on the same footprint.
- Hood cleaning and grease trap service are priced separately and are governed by code, not preference.
Restaurant cleaning cost per visit
Per-visit pricing is how most nightly janitorial work is quoted, and it’s the easiest number to sanity-check against your own floor plan.
| Operation size | Typical per-visit cost | What’s usually included |
|---|---|---|
| Small cafe or coffee shop | ~$100 | Floors, restrooms, trash, counter surfaces |
| Mid-size restaurant | $150–$250 | Front of house, restrooms, kitchen floors and accessible surfaces |
| Large full-service kitchen | $300+ | The above at higher square footage, plus bar and multiple restrooms |
| Deep clean (periodic) | $200–$500 typical | Equipment degreasing, walls, drains, behind the line |
| Large-scale deep clean project | $4,000–$5,000 | Full kitchen restoration, often post-closure or pre-inspection |
Most nightly services put a crew in the building for four to five hours. Excellence Janitorial Services puts the standard restaurant cleaning range at $150 to $500 per visit, with the spread driven by kitchen size and how much degreasing is written into the scope.
Restaurant cleaning cost per square foot
Square-foot pricing is what larger contracts convert to, and it’s the fairest way to compare two bids on different-sized buildings. General restaurant cleaning lands between $0.12 and $0.40 per square foot.
The low end of that range assumes light surface work: floors, restrooms, trash, wipe-downs. The high end assumes kitchen degreasing is in scope. If a bid comes in at $0.10 per square foot, it is almost certainly a front-of-house-only scope, and the kitchen is a separate line item you haven’t seen yet.
HomeAdvisor’s commercial cleaning rate data shows restaurants priced above general office space for the same footprint, which is the expected result: grease, floor drains and food-contact adjacency all add labour per square foot.
Monthly restaurant cleaning contract pricing
Monthly is where most operators actually budget, and it’s where the frequency effect becomes obvious.
| Operation type | Schedule | Monthly range |
|---|---|---|
| Small cafe or fast casual | Light, 2–3 nights | $800–$3,000 |
| Mid-size restaurant | 5 nights | ~$2,000–$4,500 |
| Full-service restaurant | Nightly, 7 days | $2,000–$9,000+ |
| Nightly floor and surface only | Any | $400–$1,500 |
Boh’s operator cost guide works a useful example: a 3,000-square-foot restaurant sits near $2,075 a month on a two-night schedule and near $6,550 a month on seven nights. Same building, same scope, triple the bill.
Why frequency moves the price harder than square footage
This is the single most useful thing to understand before you negotiate. A bigger room costs more to clean once. A more frequent schedule costs more every single week, and it compounds.
The practical consequence is that the cheapest real lever you have is not haggling the per-visit rate, where vendors have thin room, but auditing whether every zone really needs the frequency it’s been assigned. Restrooms and cook line floors need nightly attention. Booth seams, light fixtures, window sills and high dusting usually don’t. Splitting your scope into nightly, weekly and monthly tiers rather than buying everything at nightly frequency is where the meaningful savings are, and it’s a conversation vendors will engage with because it doesn’t cost them margin.
What hood cleaning and grease trap service cost separately
Neither of these is part of a janitorial contract, and both are compliance obligations rather than housekeeping choices.
Exhaust hood cleaning runs roughly $200 to $600 per quarter for a typical restaurant, scaling with the size of the system and roof access difficulty. The frequency isn’t yours to choose. NFPA 96 sets it by cooking volume: monthly for solid-fuel operations, quarterly for high-volume kitchens like charbroiling and wok cooking, semiannually for moderate volume, annually for low-volume or seasonal operations. The service has to be performed by certified cleaners and a dated certificate has to stay on the premises.
Grease trap pumping is quoted by trap size and local disposal rates, and requires a licensed liquid waste hauler with manifests. A high-volume kitchen can generate 150 to 250 pounds of grease a week, so undersized traps pumped infrequently become both a cost problem and a code problem.
Kitchen deep cleaning sits between the two at $300 to $800 per visit for most operations, typically monthly to quarterly.
Budget these three as separate line items. Rolling them into one monthly figure makes your cleaning spend look unpredictable when it’s actually just quarterly.
Six variables that move a restaurant cleaning quote
- Cooking style. Fryers and charbroilers generate far more grease than a salad-and-sandwich operation, and degreasing is labour-intensive. This is the biggest scope multiplier after frequency.
- Floor type. Quarry tile with deep grout lines takes considerably longer than sealed concrete or vinyl, and grout restoration is often quoted separately.
- Hours of access. A crew that can work 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. uninterrupted is cheaper than one working around a kitchen that’s still running prep.
- Who supplies chemicals and equipment. A bid that excludes consumables can look 10–15% cheaper than one that includes them. Check this line before comparing.
- Kitchen square footage as a share of total. Two 3,000-square-foot restaurants price differently if one is 70% dining room and the other is 70% kitchen.
- Contract length. Annual terms usually price below month-to-month, which is the trade-off against keeping an easy exit.
What delivery and takeout volume adds to a cleaning quote
If a meaningful share of your orders leave in a bag, you have cleaning surface area a dine-in-only restaurant doesn’t, and it shows up in the quote in three places.
Additional floor traffic at the hand-off point. A side door used by couriers through a dinner rush sees outdoor footfall at dining-room volume with none of the dining-room matting. Expect that threshold and vestibule to be added to the nightly floor scope rather than the weekly one.
A packing and staging zone. The bench, shelving and racking where bagged orders wait need end-of-night degreasing and periodic shelf cleaning. It’s a small add on a monthly bill, usually tens of dollars rather than hundreds, but it has to be named in the scope or it won’t be touched.
Insulated bags and thermal totes. These are effectively never in a janitorial contract and shouldn’t be. They need wiping and air drying between shifts with a food-safe cleaner, which stays with your staff. The cost here is labour minutes and bag rotation, not vendor spend. Budget for enough bags that one set can be drying while another is in service.
None of this moves a quote dramatically. What it does is prevent the version of the conversation where a vendor prices a dining room, invoices for a dining room, and you discover in month three that the packing area was never in scope.
Hidden fees that don’t appear in the quoted monthly price
- Chemical and consumable restocking, when not included
- Holiday and weekend premium rates
- Emergency or same-day call-out charges
- Equipment rental for floor machines on periodic work
- Change orders for anything outside the written scope
That last one is the expensive one. A vague scope reportedly costs 10% to 20% a year in change-order overruns, routinely more than the gap between the bids you were choosing between. Writing a detailed, zone-by-zone scope is a cost control measure, not paperwork.
How to tell an aggressive bid from an unrealistic one
A bid meaningfully below the ranges here isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s always explained by something. Find out which:
- Reduced frequency. Fine, if you chose it. Not fine if it’s buried in the schedule table.
- Narrower scope. Check whether the kitchen, or degreasing, quietly fell out.
- Consumables excluded. Add 10–15% mentally and re-compare.
- Subcontracted labour with thin insurance. Ask for the certificate of insurance before you get excited about the number.
- Introductory pricing that escalates. Read the rate-increase clause.
A bid meaningfully above the range should be explained too, usually by heavy degreasing scope, difficult floors, or a shorter contract term. Either way the question is the same one: what is this priced against? That’s why the scope document comes first, and why it’s worth reading how to scope and vet a cleaning provider before you collect quotes rather than after.
Frequently asked questions
How much does restaurant cleaning cost per month? Between $800 and $3,000 a month for small cafes and fast casual operations on a light schedule, and $2,000 to $9,000 or more for a full-service restaurant cleaned nightly. Frequency drives the spread more than size does.
What is the hourly rate for commercial restaurant cleaning? Commercial cleaning rates span roughly $20 to $150 an hour depending on the work and the market, with routine surface cleaning at the low end and specialist deep cleaning typically $50 to $100 an hour. Most restaurant contracts convert to per-visit or per-square-foot pricing rather than billing hourly.
How much does a commercial kitchen deep clean cost? Usually $300 to $800 per visit, with larger or long-neglected kitchens running $200 to $500 at the low end of project pricing and up to $4,000 to $5,000 for a full restoration.
Is hood cleaning included in a restaurant cleaning contract? No. Exhaust hood cleaning is a separate certified trade governed by NFPA 96, typically $200 to $600 per quarter. A janitorial contract covers the hood’s exterior only.
Is it cheaper to hire cleaners in-house? It depends on what you count. In-house hourly wages can look lower, but the real comparison includes payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, benefits, supplies, equipment and turnover. Most operations end up hybrid: staff handle during-service and closing tasks, and a contractor handles overnight floors and periodic deep work.
