Welcome to Our Blog!

Hello and welcome to our blog! Our team is excited to share with you all of the tips and tricks to get the most out of your A1 Filter Box, as well as some helpful information as to how and why keeping up on hood filter cleaning is vital for your commercial kitchen. Another major pillar of our efforts will be to explore the damaging environmental impact that greasy wastewater can have on local waterways, including how storm sewers play into that.

There’s a lot to touch on, so be sure to read on below and stay tuned for future posts!

About A1 Filter Box

If you’re just meeting us for the first time, be sure to check out our full story on our About Us page.

To make a long story short, the A1 Companies family was started as a hood cleaning company named A-1 Power Steamers in the St. Louis area. We still operate that business and provide support to restaurant owners in the region that need a deep cleaning of their hood filter exhaust system.

Regularly cleaning restaurant hood filters is the primary way your commercial kitchen can work to prevent grease build-up in the exhaust system above your cooking equipment. With our work in the field, we could see there were two common problem themes that kitchen managers and restaurant owners were dealing with around cleaning their restaurant hood filters, which are:

  1. Lacking a dedicated spot where hood filters could be regularly cleaned without putting them through commercial sinks and leaving greasy residue plus contaminating plumbing and waterways with grease water that should not be going down the drain.
  2. Needing a way to prevent kitchen managers from opting to clean filters outside (as many restaurants do), which directly impacts greasy water runoff entering storm sewers and contaminating local waterways. Plus, this method of cleaning often leaves unsightly stains on or around the building of the restaurant.

So, we got to work. After some research and a lot of hard work, the A1 Filter Box was born. Now, we’re proud to offer multiple versions of the A1 Filter Box to suit any commercial kitchen and allow them to effectively clean hood filters without damaging the filter, dirtying sinks, and inadvertently polluting our waterways.

Best of all, kitchen managers everywhere report huge time savings with our fast, effective filter cleaning setups.

We’re Still Cleaners at Heart

At the end of the day, we understand that no commercial kitchen has time on their side. Whether you’re running a cafeteria or restaurant, there’s never enough time in the day to get every bit of prep work, food service, and deep cleaning done.

That’s why we developed the A1 Filter Box to be effective and easy to use above all else. We want your team to regularly clean the hood filters without damage to allow for your restaurant to smoothly release exhaust waste to avoid endangering your facility with a potentially hazardous fire risk in the exhaust system. 

The A1 Filter Box was built by hood exhaust and filter cleaners for anyone to replicate the level of quality and efficiency we provide in a deep cleaning during what should be a day-to-day task for them.

Environmentalism Always Helps

Another major reason we’re so proud of the A1 Filter Box is its inherent ability to prevent greasy wastewater from damaging your plumbing and local waterways. Greasy water downstream from a few popular restaurants can easily see buildup and incredible damages to local wildlife.

Many of the restaurant owners we’ve worked with over the years would love nothing more than to claim their environmental impact is going down, especially on the local level. Yet, many restaurants believe they’re running a clean operation from the supply and emissions side of things, but fail to recognize the real damages that greasy runoff from their hood filter cleanings can have when left unattended.

The A1 Filter Box provides a solution to multiple problems at once, but not least of all is the ability to safely and easily dispose of grease buildup on your filters without any harmful wastewater generation. 

Choose Your Perfect Fit

The early feedback from the first A1 Filter Box was that it might not suit every kitchen out there. We quickly remedied that problem with a variety of options that are designed to work with any commercial kitchen.

We provide the A1 Filter Box in the following unique forms:

  1. Wall-Mounted – Just like it sounds, this A1 Filter Box can be placed on the wall, often near the mop sink in your kitchen. This convenient option stays put and is always available for your team to use when cleaning the filters. The only moving part they’ll have to worry about is grease collection and the occasional filter change.
  2. Removable Sink-Mounted Unit – This style allows you to leverage your commercial sinks as a filter cleaning station. While the handy filter box can easily be stored out of the way when not in use, the sinks below will be dedicated to this purpose during cleaning. This model still captures grease and offers all the benefits of our other models, just at a smaller size.
  3. Indoor/Outdoor Cart – By attaching our sink-mounted unit to a cart, we allow for filter cleaning anywhere. You can even safely use this model outdoors without worrying about grease stains on the building or parking lot and still achieve no greasy runoff into storm sewers and waterways. When your team is done, they can easily store the cart and filter box for later use.

With these three options, no commercial kitchen will have to run their kitchen hood filters through the dish sinks, haphazardly spray them off in the mop sink, or line them up against the back of the building ever again. You can feel great knowing that your filters will be cleaner, your exhaust system will stay cleaner longer, and your kitchen’s environmental impact will fall dramatically.

Questions? We’re Happy to Help!

The team at A1 is ready to help with any questions or comments you may have. Not sure which model would work best? We can absolutely point you in the right direction.

Get in touch with us to learn more today!

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