Oven Cleaning Franchise - Training - Business - AGA

Oven Cleaning Franchise Opportunity

 Hello ny name is Graham Rogers and welcome to my  blog. If you have somehow got here from a search engine then thanks for looking.

I started this blog on this site but have recently moved the content to  the oven cleaning business blog  so the content switched to this new site at the end of March 2012. So for regular updates from me please visit that site.

Graham Rogers March 2012

 

FOUR STEPS TO YOUR OVEN CLEANING BUSINESS WITH OVENGLEAMERS:

STEP ONE: CLICK this link and read the post oven cleaning franchise 

STEP TWO:  Click HERE and Submit your name and email to get my FREE  Oven Cleaning Franchise Start Up Guide 

- You will be sent an email to your inbox - please confirm this link.

STEP THREE: Click HERE to Get the OvenGleamers oven cleaning franchise prospectus. 

- You will be sent an email to your inbox - please confirm this link.

STEP FOUR: Give me, Graham Rogers, or my wife Catherine, a ring in the office. We will then send you a detailed map showing an example of your terriorty in your area, and the current real returns and projected return our pilot franchise is getting in Berkshire. Have a look at what we are offering and then and make an appointment to come to our office meet us, see our system, see if it is right for YOU. Bring your wife, husband or partner along so they can check us out too.

Ring us NOW on 01275 370571.

 

STOP PRESS:

2011 has been a great year for us. We now have five franchisees and as we sold three of these in 3 days we are the fastest growing oven cleaning franchise in the UK. We are putting things in place to really make our business opportunity the ultimate van based franchise. All franchisees are doing well with plenty of business and progressive growth.

So for 2012 why not get on board with us? Get in contact with us on 01275 370571

 

Related articles

• Oven Cleaning Scary Movie 1 (ovencleaning.wordpress.com)
• OvenCleaning.TV New Video Showing New Dip Tank For New Franchisee (ovencleaning.wordpress.com)

Oven Cleaners Top Tips for Cleaning Burners

I thought I'd share some top tips with you for cleaning cooker hob burner units that I have known about for a while but have been asked about more than once lately.

Question one is: How do you get the black carbon off of the aluminium burners surrounds?

Well for this the normal process to clean them is to use a steel scourer or a soap pad and just grip the burner in your hand between finger and thumb with one hand and with the other holding the scourer in the same way rub the scourer along the aluminium. I tend to hold the burner close to my chest which means I tend to make my shirt wet. This works every time and I get a great shiny end result. I have tried wearing an apron but found it impractical and I got too hot. But the tip is this if the burner is really black and just won't move with the steel scourer, then I use a product called Astonish Grease Buster Tablets which I keep as an emergency item in the van. You need to be careful with this product, and it does mean using some hot water from the customer. You need to read the full instructions and take the appropriate precautions! But I have found that for the really tough ones this product gets all the black off and gives a brilliant finish every time.

Question two is: How do I get the brass bits of the burners, that is the rings around the burners that are on some ranges, clean?

Well the normal answer would be again I use the same method as the for the aluminium rings as above with the scourer and elbow grease. But for a fantastic finish I use White Vinegar. You just soak them for 30 minutes and they come out looking like new. Again be careful with the vinegar and take appropriate precautions!!

Oven Cleaning Franchise at National Franchise Exhibtion 2013

Oven cleaning Franchise OvenGleamers at the National Franchise Exhibition Show. We are just about getting to the end of the first day and it has been busy. We have given out lots of free guides and hopefully we will get some bookings for our open days. The video here taken on my iPad shows the van in its position, it got its own area, next to Creation Station and The Best Of.

Citan First One sold In UK to OvenGleamers Oven Cleaning

Here is our new OvenGleamers van and we were told that is one of the first if not the first one to be sold in the UK. I been excited today as I hadn't seen it at all before today and was looking forward to seeing it. They delivered it at 3 o'clock this afternoon and I popped out in it to get some extra graphics put on the back. One of the logos on the back is also making its first appearance on the back of a van and that is the British Franchise Association Franchisees Member Badge. This is the badge that Franchisees who join as Franchisee members be allowed to have on their van and other promotional material. I had to get permission from the top of the BFA to put it on my van as I am not strictly a franchisee member but a franchisor, but they saw the benefit of me having it on the van as I could show potential franchisees the badge and tell them about the benefits of being a franchisee member of the BFA. the badge is red and just says a member of the British franchise Association.. 

So this was my second drive in the Citan, last time it was in the dark so this time I had time to play with some of the stuff. Overall the van is really great to drive and I loved the stop start technology and look forward to driving it up to the NEC tomorrow. I setting off early dropping my son off at School and then straight onto the motorway to get there on time, I'll probably be there pretty early, but set up starts at 1000. I'm taking a dip tank that we are going to have as a static display.

So come and see us at the National Franchise show this Friday and Saturday 22 and 23 February 2013.

 

Citan Van For Oven Cleaning Company

I said in an either post that I had committed to the Mercedes Benz Citan, and it is currently being fitted out. It is the first one that Mercedes-Benz has done for us so we are treating the fit of my van as a 'dry run' to learn the ropes so that we will have a smooth operation in place when a franchise comes on board. Today the van nearly went off for the fit of the partition before the van had been ply lined. We have found from experience that to get the lining of the rear 'wet area' right so that it is sealed properly we need to make sure that the ply lining goes in first before we put the partition in. Then we can get the partition in as a perfect fit. We use no metal brackets and the end job is a very good looking job. So it has put the van fit behind by one day. But hopefully it will still be fine, we have until next Wednesday to complete the fit ready for the Franchise Show.

I test drove a Citan van last week, (not mine, mine went on the road for the first time to day) and my first impressions of the Citan van from Mercedes is very good. I'm going to put a full review together for next week. My van is the Mercedes Benz Citan C90 Blue Efficiency with stop start technology But overall the things l liked the best were - the stop start technology, when you get to the lights put the handbrake on and put the van into neutral, the engine goes off, when the lights change you push the clutch and the van starts straight away. It felt very smooth to drive and even though the handbrake lever got some getting used to I think I cracked it towards the end of the drive.

AGA Clean after cooking the Pancakes

I cooked our meal tonight and as it was Pancake day I cooked pancakes. I followed a recipe by Lucy Young in the book AGA Easy. The recipe was take 100 grams of flour, one egg and 300 ml of milk and whisk them all up and put to one side for 10 minutes. Then lift the AGA simmering plate lid and leave it up for five minutes before you start the cooking. Poor the mixture directly onto the top of the simmering plate. I remember for the last few years I have been using a pan rather than putting the mix straight onto the top of the plate, but this year I had a secret weapon. And you could call it a weapon as I sure it could double up as an axe if sharpened up. So what am I referring to, well the AGA Pizza Paddle. I bought one just before Christmas much to the disgust of my wife "spending £40 on that thing". But do you know it is brilliant. Absolutely fabulous for getting pizzas out of the AGA oven and tonight fabulous for getting the pancake off the top of the simmering plate and turning it over. So the pancakes were great, we had a savoury one to start and then a sweet one for afters.  But the AGA looked a bit of a mess after I had done the job; we need an AGA Cleaning company! The AGA has been getting pretty dirty recently; the main problem, that is if you'd call it a problem is that we have been cooking on the AGA a lot more in the last nine months that we had ever done before. We've been making the Supperlicious and Hello Fresh recipes - the food delivered a box that you have to make your self but they send you a recipe card and the correct amount of ingredients for each meal. So great meals but dirty AGA. The AGA will need a proper clean soon so I'll either have to do it myself or get one of the guys to do it.

See the full gallery on Posterous

AGA Total Control Problems Being Ignored By AGA Poor Customer Service

I wrote about the problems with the new AGA Total Control last year it. If you look at the AGA Total Control Problems post on www.AGACentral.com you will see that the number of replies to the forum entry is now up to 116 and people are still sitting with unserviceable AGA Total Control that don't work and lights flash and what do AGA do. Well nothing, just long silence from their customer care centre if you'd call it that. So they have paid £10K for the cooker which works well for a while and then suddenly breaks down, usually caused by poor what looks like water condensation problems caused by poor venting.

I was in my local AGA shop in Highbridge last October and there was an AGA Total Control there and the lady in the showroom told me that AGA were carrying out an upgrade to sort out all the problems. Well this looks like to be the case but they aren't helping people with immediate problems.

I hope they sort out all the problems soon as this may be a huge PR issue which may give AGA a black mark; on one side lots of unhappy customers with broken down AGA Total controls and on the other side AGA are winning prizes for their new 'brilliant AGA'.

Oven Cleaning Van Extraordinaire From OvenGleamers The Oven Cleaning Franchise

We have decided to change our van supplier for Franchisees. If you read my blog you will probably aware that I wrote a glowing post about the Peugeot Partner van which I bought last year and which was going to be our preferred van from a preferred supplier a local company.  Unfortunately the company wasn't able to get a van quick enough for my liking last year when we wanted one. And although I think the Peugeot is a fabulous van, it looks great, drives well, is robust, and looks great in our OvenGleamers livery there were some things that niggled me from a professional oven cleaner prospective. The supplier had increased the cost of the electrical fit on the last fit they did which, although I didn't say anything at the time, was a bit of a cheek. And I didn't like the fact that it only had one side door. If you've read some of my really old posts on oven cleaning van you would have seen that I mentioned that the best fit for an oven cleaning van is one with two side doors, and a tailgate. The only problem with this arrangement is that to get this spec with the doors you need to make a factory order and the vans I liked, the Peugeot Partner, the Citreon Berlingo, and the Nissan NV200 did come with a tailgate how ever you ordered it!

Enter the new Mercedes Citan van.

In October 2011 I was training three new franchisees together and I remember being in the office and taking a strange call. The lady who rang was very nice and wanted to know what sort of vans we had. She asked me all about the makes, the age of them etc and then said, "I think your Ford Transit Connect qualifies you, but it may be a bit too old let me check". Anyway she checked and said yes it would be fine and asked me if I would like to go to Germany that Saturday (it was Thursday when she was asking me) to view a van. I would be flown from my local airport and taken to the place where I would be asked my opinion of a van and they would pay me £150 in expenses! She didn't actually tell which van it was, but it either had to be a VW or a Mercedes. New Caddy - No, so I thought it had to be a new Mercedes and if they were asking for my opinion when my Transit Connect was a qualifying vehicle it had to be a similar sized one. So I booked the car parking for Saturday and then late on Friday night we got a call to say it all been cancelled. So I was disappointed, I had lost the £30 for the parking ticket but I thought "oh well I'll learn". A few weeks later a cheque arrived in the post for £150 - sorry for trouble etc etc.

So how does that lead to the Mercedes Citan van. Well a couple of weeks ago I saw the advert in the Daily Mail for the new Mercedes van and then next day I rang the local dealer and they came out to see us. And the conclusion is we have decided to go ahead with buying a Mercedes Citan for our Franchisee demonstrator van and also to start replacing our fleet. I have just ordered the Blue Efficiency one with Stop Start Technology. They come as standard with two side doors which is an immediate improvement on the Peugeot and we have come to arrangement with our local Mercedes dealer that they will keep in stock models with tailgates for potential franchisees which is going to be absolutely fabulous for us and our new franchisees. The Citan van is a revamped Renault Kangoo which I have mentioned before was a target for us, but we never hit it off with the Renault dealer in Bristol (City Motors) and the last time we went to their showroom there were two female cleaners who showed us around! So the van is the same but the support, and relationship is different.

What struck us about Mercedes is that they have a separate Commercial division, and they have an excellent support network across Europe (not that our vans are going to Europe - though maybe our franchisees may take theirs on holiday with them), and if they can't fix your van on the roadside they will take it and fix it over night. Also servicing can be done over night. All big positive points for us and franchisees.

So the point of my van show in Germany story is you normal get back something if you give them something.

So I should have my new van in the next couple of days, it is going to be fitted out and it will be at the Franchise Show at the NEC on the 22nd and 23rd. You won't be able to see inside it as it is static but you will be able to see its shiny-ness. Oven Cleaning Franchise at the NEC

Broken Light Bulb Covers

Today we got a call from a client to say that she had her oven cleaned last week and had now realised that the bulb cover had completely gone. She said it looked like it had been sawed off as there was still the top half of it in place! The oven was a NEFF single oven, so grey finish, Neff's special easy wipe finish inside; which is really isn't easy to clean especially when they are caked in burnt on carbon. Also inside it has self cleaning panel on the fan cover at the back and on the ceiling of the oven. The bulb cover in question is the one on the ceiling. So usually when you open the oven you put your hand out straight infront of you and there it is. The client was very positive that the bulb cover had been there and that he had broken it. I spoke to him he said it was definitely not there and he had actually cut himself when he had gone to replace the bulb. The client didn't want the operative around has he was accusing her of lying so I went around to the house with him. Before going we had found a cover in our spares cupboard in the office and so we went armed. I didn't really say anything to the client and went straight to the oven and then after managed to get all the bits of the old cover off and then just put the new cover in place. Problem sorted. Did we break it? I don't think so but I wasn't going to have an argument about it and the client said she was sure as she said that she had tried to get it off a while back when the bulb had gone but hadn't been able to get the cover off. Someone else may have tried and broken it in the process. If I get these bulbs where they don't come off - they sometimes stick on this type - I leave them and clean in situ.

So for oven cleaning in Bristol give us a ring on 01275 370571

Come and see our Franchise Opportunity  - OvenGleamers are at the Franchise show on the 22nd and 23rd of February 2013 at NEC Birmingham.

Oven Cleaning Horsham

Here is John Newbold our new franchisee for Horsham and West Sussex. He will be offering an oven cleaning service from Horsham where he lives right in the centre of town.

I drove down to Horsham last Wednesday, in my new OvenGleamers van, and it took me about 3 hours to get there. I stayed the night in the new Travel Lodge in the centre of Horsham, and John and myself went out for a meal. Horsham is a lovely place with lots of posh shops and the centre is a thriving shopping centre with just every restaurant you can think off. We went for an excellent Italian meal. We then were in Horsham market for the whole of Thursday, with our promotion board and smiling faces! We booked one person in and there were a few more who were very interested and told us they'd get back to us. John is booked in for the next few weeks, and we are hoping he benfits from the overflow of other oven cleaning business in the area who are already booked up.

This is the first video for John; I have, so far put four together so far and I am looking at doing another one. John has lived in Horsham for a while and knows a lot of people in Horsham and the surrounding areas and is a very friendly and we look forward to helping to grow his business.

So if you have an oven, range cooker or an AGA cooker that needs cleaning in the Horsham, Mid Sussex or West Sussex areas then please contact him for further details on 01403 800088 or visit his website: oven cleaning horsham

How to Split a NEFF or Bosch door with Triangles in the corner

Here is a video of How to Split a NEFF, or Bosch Oven Door with the trangles on - the triangles refer to the trangle shapes in the corner of the inside of the doors. The oven that we had in our house was one of these and I used to train all our new employees on it. It wasn't until a couple of years after we had moved out of the house that I discovered that you could actually take these doors apart. I went to a house where the lady insisted that I took the door apart and presented me with the manual. I found the right bit and took it apart. 

I have always found that when you take the outer door off the inside is usually perfect and you really have to be careful not to make it dirty. So I only take it apart when it really is necessary and this is usually when you can see a run of dirt inside and then it is a case of opening up the door and quickly taking cleaning the door and then putting it back together.

How to fix a problem with Baumatic when the nut falls into the inside of the oven

I cleaned a Baumatic range cooker a couple of weeks ago and I had a few problems with it. This isn't unusual as the Baumatic ranges are poor quality and if there is one range that is going to fall apart as you clean it then you can bet on is one. On my list of jobs I thought I was going to be cleaning two singles which normally means two single ovens side by side. But when I got there I realised it was the two ovens of the Baumatic double oven range cooker. The cooker was a the cooker that came with the house as the house was in a cul de sac where I have cleaned three other ranges all of which were Baumatic and one of them I had a problem with the seals which we had to replace.

The  problem with this was was that when I was scrapping it the blade caught one of the clips which is on the retaining back plate  nut for the screw that holds on one of the side racks in place. It fell out inside the cooker. I thought about it and as there was only way to get it back in and that was to take the panels off and then find the nut I decided to go for it. The alternative was to get a cooker repair company and the bill would have been at least £100.

To get into the inside of the oven to retrieve the nut I had to remove all the screws on the front plate of the range. There were quite a few of them. Then once I had done this I was able to move the whole front panel of the range forward and then get my hand into the space behind the oven - see the video. I found the nut after a while, it had slipped right down the bottom, and then I had to get back into place. To do this was tricky as I had to bend the little clips on the nut so that I could then put the nut back in place. But in the end I did it. 

Then I put the panels back and finished off the clean and everything looked fabulous. So in the end a good job but I won't be excited about the next Baumatic range I have to clean.