Recurring maintenance is the most valuable thing a commercial drainage company sells, and the most under-sold. Most companies already have the customers: restaurants, cafeterias, care homes and apartment buildings that called once when something backed up. Turning those single visits into scheduled plans takes a clear offer, a price the customer can budget, a service record they value and a renewal routine. This guide covers all four. If you'd rather have it built for you, see maintenance-contract marketing.
Know what's driving the customer
Two things push a food business or building towards scheduled service: the cost of disruption, and the rules some municipalities set.
Disruption. A blocked kitchen line can close a restaurant for a lunch service or more. A backed-up building main means calls from tenants, damage and an emergency rate. The owner remembers that cost for weeks, which is why the strongest moment to offer a plan is right after an emergency.
Municipal rules. Some cities set servicing intervals and record-keeping for food businesses. As of October 2026, three we checked on official pages:
| Municipality | What its page says (summary) | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Metro Vancouver | Pump-out by a service provider every 90 days, or sooner if fats, oils, grease and solids exceed 25% of total liquid depth; two years of records | Metro Vancouver |
| Toronto | Four-week interval for hydro-mechanical traps; 25% threshold for gravity interceptors; records kept on site for at least seven years | City of Toronto |
| Calgary | Service at least once every four weeks; previous two years of maintenance records available for inspection | City of Calgary |
These summaries leave out exemptions and detail. Customers should confirm their own obligations with their municipality, and you should never present yourself as the authority on what they must do. Use the rules to explain why a schedule and a tidy record are useful, not to threaten fines. In every other municipality, check the official page before mentioning anything.
Design the offer
A good maintenance offer has a name, a frequency, a scope, a record and a price.
Name it. "Quarterly line care" or "Four-week interceptor service" is easier to say yes to than "scheduled maintenance as required".
Match the frequency to the customer. A café with a small hydro-mechanical trap and a hospital kitchen with a large gravity interceptor need very different schedules. Where a city sets an interval, your plan should make meeting it easy; where it doesn't, base the frequency on what you find at the first visits.
Define the scope. Pump-out, cleaning, inspection of components, line jetting, camera check of a known problem line: say what's included and what's extra.
Leave a record. A one-page service record after every visit, with date, what was done, condition found and the technician's name. In cities that ask operators to keep records, this record is part of what the customer is buying.
Price it simply. One number per visit and one per year.
Three tiers usually cover most customers:
| Plan | Typical customer | Frequency (illustrative) | What's included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | Small café or bakery | Set by your findings or the city's interval | Pump-out, cleaning, service record |
| Standard | Full-service restaurant | As above, plus scheduled line jetting | Everything in Basic plus jetting of the main kitchen line |
| Building | Apartment or mixed-use building | Twice a year | Main stacks, parkade drains, sumps, findings report |
Present the price
Customers judge maintenance prices against two things: the cost of an emergency, and what they're paying now.
A worked illustration with assumed numbers: a restaurant on a four-week interceptor schedule at $240 a visit pays $3,120 a year (13 visits). If its last blockage cost a $780 emergency callout plus a lost dinner service worth $2,500 in gross sales, one avoided incident covers most of the year's plan. Put those two numbers side by side, using the customer's own figures where they'll share them.
For property managers, present the annual figure and the per-unit monthly figure. A $2,600 building plan for a 48-unit building is about $4.50 per unit per month, which reads very differently from "$2,600".
Sell it at the right moment
Four moments convert best:
- Right after an emergency visit. Send a short findings note and a two-option plan within 48 hours.
- When a new restaurant opens or a building changes manager.
- Before budgets are set, for property managers and institutions.
- When a customer asks about records for their municipality.
Your crews are your best salespeople. Give technicians a two-sentence explanation of the plan and a card to leave behind. Don't ask them to hard-sell; ask them to mention it.
Follow up within the law
Reminder texts and emails that promote your service are commercial electronic messages under Canada's anti-spam law. Get consent at sign-up and record it. The Act requires an unsubscribe request to be acted on without delay and within 10 business days (CASL, s. 11), and every commercial message needs your identification and a working unsubscribe. Purely transactional notices, such as "your technician arrives Tuesday", are a different category, but if you add an offer to them, treat them as commercial. This is how we run our process, not legal advice; ask your own adviser about edge cases.
A sample reminder text, as a template:
[Company name]: your [plan name] visit at [Business name] is booked for [date]. Reply to change the time. Reply STOP to opt out of reminders.
Deliver so the plan sells itself
- Turn up on the scheduled day. A missed visit is the most common reason customers cancel.
- Leave the record every time, and email a copy.
- Flag problems early with photos, and quote repairs separately and clearly.
- Group visits by area so your routes stay efficient; that's where scheduled work makes its margin.
Renew before they think about it
Sixty days before the anniversary, send a one-page renewal summary:
- visits completed and on time
- what you found and anything caught early
- records kept on their behalf
- next year's schedule and price
- one suggestion, such as adding a line or another location
A worked illustration, assumed figures: 40 plan customers at an average $2,800 a year is $112,000 of scheduled revenue. Lifting renewal from 75% to 90% keeps six more customers, worth $16,800 a year, for the cost of a well-written letter and a phone call.
Common mistakes
- Selling fear of fines instead of fewer closures and easier records.
- Citing a bylaw you haven't read, or one from a different city.
- Variable pricing that customers can't budget.
- No service record, which removes half the value of the plan.
- Sending promotional reminders without consent.
- Letting the plan lapse silently instead of renewing it actively.
What to do next
Pull every one-off commercial customer from the last two years and sort them by type. That list is your first campaign. For how we'd package it, see maintenance-contract marketing; for buildings, see strata and property-manager programs. To talk it through, call, text or email.
Frequently asked questions
Should we quote the municipal interval in our sales material?
Only for municipalities whose current page you've read, with the date you checked and a line telling customers to confirm with the city. Rules differ and change, and you're not the regulator.
What's the easiest customer to convert to a plan?
One you've just served for an emergency. The cost and disruption are fresh, and they already know your crew.
Monthly billing or annual?
Offer both if your cash flow allows. Many small restaurants prefer a monthly charge; property managers often prefer an annual figure for the budget.
How do we stop customers cancelling after a quiet year?
Show them what the quiet year was worth: visits completed, what was found, problems caught early, and records kept for them. Quiet is the result they paid for.