Hood and grease trap rules for Florida restaurants

Why these two systems dominate restaurant budgets

Ask anyone who has built a restaurant what surprised them and you will hear the same two words: the hood and the grease trap. They are the systems that make a commercial kitchen legal, they involve the most trades at once, and they are the reason second-generation restaurant space is so valuable. Industry reporting in Modern Restaurant Management puts the savings from reusing an existing hood, grease trap or HVAC at more than $100,000. Here is what the rules actually require, in plain language. This is an orientation, not engineering; your sealed drawings govern.

Type I hoods: for grease and smoke

The Florida Building Code's mechanical provisions, in Section 507, govern commercial kitchen hoods. The dividing line is what your appliances produce. Equipment that produces grease or smoke, fryers, griddles, charbroilers and similar, requires a Type I hood: a grease-rated canopy with grease filters, a dedicated exhaust duct, and makeup air to replace what the fan removes. Lighter-duty equipment that produces only heat and steam can fall under the gentler Type II requirements. The practical consequence: your menu and equipment list determine your mechanical design, so lock the equipment plan down early. Changing from a convection oven concept to a charbroiler concept after permitting is a redesign, not a tweak.

Fire suppression above the cooking line

A Type I hood comes paired with an automatic fire suppression system, in practice a wet-chemical system listed to the UL 300 standard, tied into the building's alarm. The framework runs through the code's hood and suppression provisions and NFPA 96, the standard for commercial kitchen ventilation and fire protection, as adopted through the Florida Fire Prevention Code. The fire authority reviews this separately from the building review, and in Manatee County that authority depends on where you are: the county is served by independent fire districts that do their own plan review. Our permits guide lists who reviews what, jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

Grease interceptors: the system under the floor

Grease cannot go to the sewer, so the plumbing code, FBC Plumbing Section 1003, requires an interceptor or trap for fixtures and equipment that receive grease-laden waste in food preparation areas. If you run a food waste grinder, a solids interceptor goes ahead of the grease unit. Sizing and placement are design questions; a large interceptor is often an underground tank outside the building, which is why adding one to a space that never had food service can mean excavation, and why it is a classic change-of-use cost.

Operations are enforced locally by the sewer authority. Manatee County's FOG program, short for fats, oils and grease, requires food service facilities on county sewer to install interceptors, pump them out at least every four months, sooner if measured grease and solids levels say so, use county-permitted haulers, and keep records; skimming or pump-and-return is prohibited. Sarasota County runs its own FOG ordinance for its utility customers with inspections, required interceptors and routine pump-outs on a set schedule. Pump-out contracts are an operating cost to budget, not a construction item.

The state layer: DBPR plan review

Separate from the building permit, Florida's Division of Hotels and Restaurants at DBPR requires plan review before licensing any public food service establishment that is newly built, converted from another use, remodeled, or reopened after being closed at least 18 months. The submittal is a complete application, a scaled floor plan with equipment labeled, and a sample menu, and DBPR states online applications are reviewed within 30 days. Local checklists tie into this: North Port's commercial buildout checklist, for example, expressly requires proof of DBPR or health approval for restaurants with ten or more seats. We coordinate the DBPR submittal alongside the building permit so the reviews run in parallel instead of in series.

What this means for your site search

Every rule above is cheaper to satisfy in a space that already satisfied it once. A former restaurant with a certified hood, a sound interceptor and adequate HVAC is carrying six figures of reusable infrastructure, which is the entire argument of our second-generation space post. When we price a restaurant buildout, the first walkthrough verifies exactly which of these systems the space already has and what condition they are in, the way we did before taking the Fresh Monkee space in Sarasota from shell to open for business.