PlumbingBossPro Blog — Dispatch & Scheduling

Routing Restaurant Grease-Line Jetting Every 14 or 30 Days

Restaurant kitchens are hard on drain lines. Grease cools, sticks and builds up until a line backs up in the middle of a Friday dinner rush. Plenty of plumbing shops sell restaurants regular jetting to stay ahead of it. Done right, it is steady, predictable work. Done wrong, it is a pile of angry kitchen managers and missed visits.

Recurring Work With a Clock

Like the maintenance visits in Scheduling Yearly Water Heater Flushes, Softener Service and Backflow Tests Around Service Calls, grease-line jetting is recurring. The difference is the pace. Instead of once a year, it comes around every 14 or 30 days, and the timing within the day matters a lot more.

Setting Up the Cycle

In PlumbingBossPro, recurring work is set by minimum days between visits. For grease-line jetting, that usually means:

• Every 14 days for busy kitchens with heavy fryer and grill use.
• Every 30 days for lighter kitchens.

When the minimum days have passed, the next visit comes due and shows on the Waiting List map. Because these come around so often, a restaurant account will appear on the Waiting List many times a year, so it pays to have a routine for them.

Timing Around Service

Restaurants do not want a plumber running a jetter through the kitchen during lunch. Most jetting needs to happen:

• Early morning, before prep starts.
• Mid-afternoon, between lunch and dinner, for some places.
• After close, for shops that offer evening work.

Write each restaurant's acceptable times in the access notes on the property: “Before 9:30am only. Kitchen manager Luis, back door by the dumpster.” The tech sees it on the job card every visit.

Routing a Restaurant Day

Because restaurant visits are time-sensitive, auto-route alone usually is not enough. A practical approach:

1. Group due restaurant visits by area from the Waiting List map.
2. Put them on the van that carries the jetter.
3. Auto-route Closest First or Furthest First from the shop.
4. Set the order by hand so early-only kitchens come first.
5. Fill the rest of the day with residential calls or other work after the restaurants are done.

Some shops give restaurants their own van or their own early-morning block. Others mix them onto the drain van's mornings. Either way, the restaurants go first.

Many Locations, One Account

Restaurant groups often have several locations. In PlumbingBossPro, one client can have many addresses, each with its own equipment, access notes and recurring schedule. One location might be on a 14-day cycle and another on 30.

For billing, a client set to Monthly gets one statement each month covering every address, with each line labeled by location. The restaurant group's office gets one bill, and your office sends one bill. The jetting visits still happen and get completed one by one in the field. For more on multi-address accounts, see Dispatching Plumbing Calls for Property Managers and Landlords With Many Addresses.

What the Tech Notes

Each visit is a chance to catch problems early. On the tech app, the tech can add notes and before/after photos. Useful notes for restaurant jetting:

• How heavy the buildup was compared with last time.
• Any slow drains or fixtures noticed in the kitchen.
• Whether the cycle looks right, too short or too long.

Past notes show on the job card the next visit, so the next tech knows what to expect. If buildup is consistently heavy at 30 days, that is a conversation about moving to 14.

When a Restaurant Calls With a Backup

Even with regular jetting, backups happen. Treat them as emergencies: check crew GPS, pick the closest van with a jetter, add the call and move it up. A restaurant that cannot run its kitchen is losing money by the minute, and the shop that shows up fast keeps the account.

Keeping the Kitchen Manager on Your Side

The person who decides whether you keep a restaurant account is usually the kitchen manager, not the owner. Kitchen managers care about three things: you show up when you said, you do not get in the way of prep, and you leave the floor clean. A text the day before naming the time, a tech who checks in at the back door instead of walking through the dining room, and a short note on the job about what was found go a long way. Put the manager's name and the best number in the access notes on each location so every tech knows who to ask for.

Predictable Work, Tight Timing

Restaurant grease-line jetting is some of the most predictable recurring work in plumbing, as long as you respect the kitchen's hours and do not let visits slip. Set the cycle, route the kitchens first, note the times on the property and bill monthly. To see the full set of dispatch tools, visit the PlumbingBossPro plumbing dispatch software page.