Restaurants & cafes
Standard washing cycles rarely handle commercial kitchen grease. Here is the safest and most effective way to wash cafe tea towels.
Standard washing cycles rarely handle commercial kitchen grease. Here is the safest and most effective way to wash cafe tea towels.
# How to Get Heavy Grease Out of Cafe Tea Towels
If you run a cafe or restaurant, you know that standard washing instructions don't apply to commercial kitchen laundry. Tea towels soak up cooking oil, butter, and heavy food grease all day, turning them into a tough laundry problem.
The short answer: To get heavy grease out of cafe tea towels, you need to wash them in hot water (at least 60°C) using a heavy-duty, enzyme-based detergent. Never overload the washing machine, and completely avoid fabric softeners. Crucially, ensure all grease is removed before tumble drying to prevent a serious fire hazard.
Here is exactly how to handle greasy kitchen laundry safely and effectively.
Most residential washing is done in cold or warm water to save energy and protect delicate fabrics. However, cooking oils and animal fats solidify at lower temperatures. If you wash greasy tea towels in a cold cycle, the water simply glides over the grease, leaving the towels stiff, smelly, and unhygienic.
Commercial grease requires a combination of high heat, strong chemistry, and mechanical action (agitation in the drum) to break down.
Never wash your heavily soiled kitchen towels with aprons, front-of-house napkins, or personal clothing. The grease can easily transfer onto other fabrics during the wash cycle, ruining them.
Water and detergent need room to circulate. If you cram the washing machine drum full of tea towels, the grease has nowhere to go once it lifts from the fabric. It will just redeposit onto the load. Fill the machine to a maximum of two-thirds capacity.
Check the care labels on your tea towels, but generally, commercial cotton towels are designed to withstand high temperatures. You need a hot wash—ideally 60°C or higher—to melt the heavy fats and oils.
Skip the gentle, eco-friendly supermarket detergents for this job. You need a heavy-duty, enzyme-based powder or liquid designed to break down fats and proteins.
Fabric softener works by coating fibres in a waxy layer to make them feel fluffy. If you use it on tea towels, it drastically reduces their absorbency—exactly what you don't want for wiping down benches and drying dishes. It also traps lingering grease and odours in the fabric.
This is the most critical safety issue for hospitality businesses. If tea towels are put into a tumble dryer while they still hold residual cooking oil, the intense heat of the dryer can cause them to catch fire. This is known as spontaneous combustion, and it can happen even after the dryer has stopped if the hot towels are left sitting in a pile.
Always ensure your wash cycle has fully stripped the grease before drying. If the washed towels still smell like old cooking oil, wash them again before putting them anywhere near a hot dryer.
Washing greasy tea towels in-house takes up staff time, ties up your machines, and creates headaches with lingering kitchen smells. If your Dee Why or Northern Beaches cafe is generating more dirty laundry than you can easily handle, it might be time to outsource.
At Soak Laundry, we process commercial laundry using the right temperatures and detergents to thoroughly clean heavy kitchen grease, leaving you free to focus on your customers.
No. Cold water will not break down heavy food grease. You need hot water, ideally 60°C or higher, to properly melt and remove cooking oils from the fabric.
Never use fabric softener on tea towels. It coats the fibres and leaves a residue that ruins their absorbency, making them useless for drying dishes or wiping benches.
Advice from SOAK Laundry, Dee Why NSW. Book a laundry pickup or call 0460 120 120.