What compliance records should I ask for when buying a restaurant?

Compliance history is routinely left out of restaurant due diligence, which is expensive, because deferred maintenance on the systems in this list is discovered by the incoming operator at the first inspection after closing.

The list to request

1. Kitchen exhaust cleaning. The last two years of certificates. Look at the dates and check the interval was actually maintained rather than accumulating one certificate a year on a system that needed quarterly attention.
2. Kitchen suppression service. Semiannual reports, plus confirmation of when fusible links were last replaced.
3. Portable extinguishers. Annual maintenance records, and the six year internal examination and twelve year hydrostatic test dates. Those longer cycles are the ones that arrive as an unexpected bill.
4. Sprinkler, alarm and any generator. Ask which cycles the seller was responsible for and which the landlord handled.
5. Grease interceptor pumping manifests. These are frequently required to be retained by the local sewer authority, and the interval is local.
6. Backflow test reports. Usually annual, usually filed with the water utility within a set window.
7. The last fire inspection and the last health inspection, including any correction notices and evidence that corrections were made and filed.
8. Pest control service history. Read the technician's recommendations, not just the visit dates.

Reading the gaps

What is absent is diagnostic. A business that can produce two years of dated certificates across eight systems has been run attentively. One that produces three documents and an assurance that the cleaner comes regularly is telling you something about how the kitchen has been maintained generally, and the equipment condition usually matches.

An unresolved deficiency notice matters more than a missing certificate, because it establishes a documented known condition that somebody was told about and did not fix.

Settle the lease question before closing

Sprinkler, alarm, backflow and sometimes the interceptor are often landlord obligations, and the split is set by the lease rather than by custom. Get it in writing, and ask for copies of the landlord's reports to be routed to you as well. An inspector in your kitchen will ask you regardless of whose obligation it is.