BinderWhat records does a restaurant need to keep for inspections?
A commercial kitchen is usually responsible for eight or nine recurring services. Each is performed by a different company, on a different schedule, and produces a different document. That is the whole reason this is hard: no single vendor sees the full picture, so nobody but you can assemble it.
| Service | Typical standard | What it produces |
|---|---|---|
| Kitchen exhaust hood cleaning | NFPA 96 | Certificate plus a label on the hood |
| Kitchen suppression system | NFPA 17A | Semi-annual inspection report and tag |
| Portable fire extinguishers | NFPA 10 | Annual maintenance tag per unit |
| Sprinkler inspection and testing | NFPA 25 | Inspection, testing and maintenance report |
| Fire alarm testing | NFPA 72 | Inspection and testing report |
| Grease interceptor pumping | Local FOG ordinance | Pumping manifest, often with volume |
| Backflow prevention testing | Local water authority | Annual test report, often filed with the utility |
| Emergency and exit lighting | NFPA 101 | Monthly and annual test records |
The two that surprise people
Grease interceptor pumping is usually local. It is set by a municipal fats, oils and grease ordinance rather than by a national standard, which means the interval genuinely varies from city to city and the manifest often has to be retained for a period the ordinance specifies.
Backflow testing may be owed to the water utility, not the fire marshal. It is frequently filed directly with the utility by the tester, which means it is the one record operators most often assume is handled and never see a copy of. Ask your tester to send you one.
Who actually holds these
In an owner occupied building, you do. In a leased building it is split, and the split is written in your lease rather than in any code. Systems serving the whole building, sprinkler and fire alarm in particular, are often the landlord's, while everything inside your four walls is yours. Read the lease before you assume, because "the building handles that" is the sentence that precedes most missing records.
This page describes what published standards say. It is not legal advice and it is not a determination about any premises. The requirements that apply to your building, including how often work must be done and what must be kept, are set by your authority having jurisdiction, which is usually your local fire marshal or health department. Where this page and your inspector disagree, your inspector is right.
Keeping this straight without thinking about it
Binder tracks each of these against the equipment it belongs to, with the published interval as a starting default that you can change. The list above becomes a page showing what is on file, what is due, and what has nothing against it at all.
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