Turnover Went From 300% to 12%. Here’s What We Changed.
Here’s a number most companies would rather not put in print. Before 2018, Kitchen Guard’s annual technician turnover ran between 300 and 600 percent. That isn’t a typo. In a bad year, a location could cycle through its entire crew three to six times over.
Within a year of rebuilding how we train and pay our people, it fell to 12 percent.
The International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaning Association (IKECA) featured how we got there in the Fall 2026 issue of The IKECA Journal, in a piece by staff writer Paul Adair on how kitchen exhaust cleaning companies should be building modern training programs. We were profiled alongside Nelbud Services and IA Business Advisors.
If you’re considering a career in this trade — or you’re already in it and wondering whether there’s a version of this job worth staying in — here’s what actually changed.
Crawl, Walk, Run
New technicians at Kitchen Guard don’t get handed a pressure washer and a route on day one.
Training is structured by career stage and built around a Crawl-Walk-Run progression. New technicians start with explicit, written expectations for three things: how a system gets cleaned, how the work gets documented, and how appointment notes are written. That last one sounds minor until you realize a technician who writes a clear post-service report is the reason a customer’s fire marshal inspection goes smoothly six months later.
Every step of that progression is backed by hands-on coaching in the field, not a binder. As skills grow, so do the standards being coached against.
Our instruction is also deliberately repair-focused, including specialized work with pressure washers and pollution control units (PCUs). Hood cleaning is the entry point to this trade. It isn’t the ceiling. Technicians who can diagnose a failing fan, spec a hinge kit, or troubleshoot a PCU become far more valuable — to customers, and to their own paychecks.
Yes, We Train in VR
We’ve built virtual reality training modules for technicians, repair and maintenance staff, and consultants.
This isn’t a gimmick. The VR modules give trainees a fully immersive way to experience a job before they’re standing on a roof at 11 p.m. They reinforce skills already practiced at our training Hub and expand the range of real-world scenarios a technician has seen — including the ones you can’t schedule on purpose, like a system in far worse shape than the work order suggested.
The result is a technician whose first unusual job isn’t actually their first unusual job.
Mentorship That Someone Gets Paid For
Here’s the part most companies skip.
Plenty of businesses tell senior people to “mentor the new guys.” Almost none of them pay for it, which means it happens in whatever time is left over — usually none. We incentivize experienced technicians with bonuses for developing entry-level associates into confident foremen. Mentorship is compensated work with a defined finish line.
As Tim Breen, Brand President of Kitchen Guard, described it in the IKECA Journal feature:
The mentor coaches and validates the apprentice’s performance until they have become self-sufficient, including nightly assistance and review of every post-service report, along with related items like suggested services and recommended repairs.
Tim Breen, Brand President, Kitchen Guard
Nightly. Every report. That’s the standard.
On top of that, foremen and associates meet one-on-one on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly cadence. Steady feedback, skills development, and a person whose job includes your development — not a performance review once a year where somebody reads a form back to you.
A Real Path, With a Real Test at the End of It
Associates are onboarded into the training structure from day one. Moving up to foreman means completing a 90-day program that ends with a competency test — so the promotion means something specific, and everyone on the crew knows what it took.
Advanced foreman training goes further, reinforcing industry terminology and connecting location-level service and repair recommendations to how the business actually performs. Foremen learn to read scorecards and standard operating procedures, not just follow them. That’s the difference between running a truck and running a business unit.
Why Any of This Matters
We changed this structure alongside a compensation plan change in 2018. Within a year, annual turnover dropped from the 300-to-600 percent range to 12 percent.
Breen’s read on why is not complicated:
At the center of this success is strong frontline leadership; leaders who look out for their crews, get to know them personally, and show that the company is invested in its employees — which in turn makes techs more invested in the company. People don’t quit jobs; they quit bad managers.
Tim Breen, Brand President, Kitchen Guard
For our customers, this is why service looks the same in March as it did in October — the technician on the roof has been trained against a documented standard and coached by someone accountable for their performance.
For anyone thinking about this trade: kitchen exhaust cleaning is skilled work that keeps restaurants from burning down. It deserves to be treated like a career with training, mentorship, and a path. That’s the business we’re trying to build.
Read the full IKECA Journal feature, “Designing Training That Works: How to Build a Modern KEC Training Program,” in the Fall 2026 issue (pages 12–13).
