Oven Cleaning Franchise - Training - Business - AGA

Oven Cleaning Franchise Loans from Lloyds TSB

2012-02-10T22:11:51+00:00

In the past few weeks a couple of our potential franchisees have seeked advice from Lloyds TSB to see whether they would give a loan towards the cost of starting a franchise with OvenGleamers. Intially the response from the Franchise Team at Lloyds TSB was one of a negative nature, they said "sorry we have never heard of them".

As Lloyds TSB have been my company's (The Oven Gleam Team Ltd) bank, since incorporation back in March 1996 this was a bit puzzling, so we contacted the right people and spoke to the main man and Lloyds TSB have told us that they were very impressed with our business, our paperwork including franchise agreeement, think that our business model is a viable one and will offer loans to people interested in an OvenGleamers franchise, which is very encouraging and welcomed.

So we also recommend Lloyds TSB as the bank to bank with to anyone looking to be a franchisee with us.

Oven Cleaners Lewes

2012-02-08T15:04:21+00:00

I have been working on our new franchisees videos today and here is the first one of Jason. Jason Luck is our new franchisee who is your local oven cleaners lewes , Eastbourne and surrounding areas of East Sussex.

Cleaning the enamel lids of an AGA Cooker

2012-02-02T21:14:41+00:00

Here is a video of me cleaning a AGA cooker with enamel lids. So you see me scraping off the grease from the lids and then the final result. This AGA came up looking the business because it was a renovated one and therefore the enamel on it was pretty good. More than often the lids come up looking clean but the enamel is damaged as a lot of people with this sort of AGA, either the standard AGA (one of the earlier ones) or the Classic AGA (a new one that looks like the old one) use the lids to rest their trays and kettles on. We use our 30Amp AGA cooker like this too and it has chrome lids but we use Chef Pads to protect the lid tops.

The AGA in this video is the one that I have previously posted about and it belonged to the author Dick King-Smith who wrote the story Babe about the pig. So this is the reason I have tried to give the video a cinematic look.

Cleaning stain off AGA door

2012-02-01T17:08:42+00:00

Here is a four.oven AGA I cleaned last week. Alan had to go to a funeral so I did his afternoon job an AGA in Shepton Mallet. The AGA was in a barn conversion and was relatively straight forward. There was a stain just above the main oven door caused by smoke etc coming out of the main oven when cooking. The lady hadnt been using the fan as sometimes is needed on an electric AGA. The stain came off okay though on the door it was more difficult to get off. Sometimes these stains are just too difficult to get off. Anyway the end result was a gleaming AGA.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Oven cleaning South Manchester

2012-01-29T11:59:53+00:00

Today me and Catherine are.standing outside John Lewis in Cheadle Hulme with Peter Richardson our franchisee doing the second day of his business launch. We did the first day last November. Well we are all wrapped up well it's a cold crisp day. Interest has been good with a couple of bookings and lots of leaflets given out. So if you are looking for an oven cleaner in cheadle hulme give Peter a ring on 0161 850 8899.

Sick Oven Cleaner

2012-01-27T21:44:41+00:00

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This month has been quieter than previous years and we have had to work very hard in the office to get the jobs booked in. It has just been a case of making contact with old clients and asking them if they would like to benefit from the special offers we have had on. So in all we have booked all four of our guys up every day for the month which has been an achievement. I have been in the office in the afternoons and have been out on a few days to clean AGAs and to cover when the guys have been sick.

This morning I was due to be working in the office but at 0715 we got a call from one of our oven cleaners to say that he had been sick in the night and couldn't work today. As all the guys were booked up it meant I had to go and do his jobs which was four double ovens at different locations including a bit of a drive to Frome in the late afternoon. So straight away I plugged the van in and then I then went to the office and printed off the jobs and then preped by van for the day. So I left home at 0820 to get to my first job on time at 0900, I had a few problems finding the place as the sat nav took me up the road a bit, but still got there on time. The oven was standard double oven and was quite dirty, the lady said they had never cleaned it and it was eight years old. I had a bit of problem cleaning it as I couldn't get the main door off, the locking mechanism wasn't working properly. Whilst doing the job I plugged my van in, it was easy as it was a farm yard, to get my tank up to temperature. The job went well and the lady was very happy. I then drove across Bristol to the second job which was in a rental. The tenants had just moved in and the oven was very bad. It was a bit of hard labour to get it clean as it was minging and it took me over two hours to do the oven and the ceramic hob. But it came up very well. During this job my wife texted me to tell me that the last job in Frome had been moved to next week so that was a relief. I drove back across Bristol to clean the last double oven and this time it was a relatively easy job, an older NEFF double oven where the door was a bit tricky to take apart but other than that it was fine. Then back to the office to clean the van out and top up my water tank. I booked a few jobs in for next week and then that was end of the day.

OvenGleam and OvenGleamers Review of 2011

2012-01-16T10:26:00+00:00

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2011 was a fabulous year for us although we had to work the hardest we've ever had to work in the office to get the guys all fully booked up. We had a few very quiet days but this made us change some things we do. So we did some things differently and worked out some new ways to market our business and get the jobs booked in, and it worked really well!

So we went to five guys working for us in May. We then had our best quarter ever in our history with a huge quarterly turnover, though we didn't like the VAT bill! And the newest guy left and we were back to four plus me which we are staying at for the forseeable future. So I ended up doing lots of AGA cleans.

We changed the way we take payments. We now only take payment by card in advance. The reason we changed this was we were becoming increasing concerned about the potential risk our guys were taking carrying around the takings they were getting. Also the cheque guarantee card was withdrawn in July and because of this we could see the demise of the cheque so thought it would be a good idea to pre empt this and take card payments only immediately. Also on two occassions in two days we'd turned up at jobs and the customer had said "sorry not today"! So as both were big jobs we lost the money.

With OvenGleamers things took off and we sold another four franchise areas - and we have three more sold in the first couple of weeks in January 2012. We now have got our van fit process right, the oven cleaning dip tank spec right (they are now built by our own manufacturer to my spec so they aren't obtained elsewhere), the business launch right and everything has come together very well.

We changed the ovengleam.com site again, now with the OvenGleamers logo and with a search box so people can search on postcodes to find out if we cover their area. The franchisees also get theeir own sites and videos.

Also our social media went wild. This blog went through the 60,000 page views barrier. My videos on Youtube had just under 20,000 views.

The OvenGleam van of the year 2012 winner for OvenGleam was Nigel and the employee of the year 2011 was Matt.

Babe AGA Clean

2012-01-15T10:25:00+00:00

Before Christmas I cleaned the AGA that belonged to Dick King-Smith the author of the book Babe about the talking pig. You've probably seen the film. The house wasn't like the farm house in the film, apparantly this house belonged to a friend of Dick's and was a farm house down the road, but was a modest cottage with a rather nice garden and a small pig statute. It wasn't Babe but was wild hog statue but I remember reading an article on Dick and it said in that that he actually called this pig Babe.

The AGA was a standard AGA with enamel tops but looked, after I taken off all the muck, like a new one so it was obviously a reconditioned AGA. Dick died a year ago and his relatives were cleaning up the house as they wanted to get it ready to sell. Anyway when I had finished the AGA looked fabulous.

What is the cost of heating up our Oven Cleaning Dip Tank

2012-01-14T21:43:00+00:00

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This is a frequently asked question. How much does it cost to heat up our plastic oven cleaning dip tank? The answer is it isn't a lot. I have never measured it but it a few pence a day as we have an off peak meter that provides electricity at a low rate during the night.

We have the off peak meter because we have a 30 Amp AGA which is effectively a huge night storage heater that does a great job of cooking too! The cost for the off peak electricity useage is £40 a month and most of this is for running the AGA. Therefore the cost to heat up my tank is minimal.

The guys who work for us heat up at home every night and they don't complain about the cost even the one who had a card meter who worked for us last year. But I expect this is about £1 to £2 a day.

Compare this with a gas burner system using propane. I'm guessing you'd get through a cylinder every ten days or so, so say two working weeks. The cost of a 6KG refill is going to be £20 top end. So not much in it really.

The Great British McCrapper

2012-01-13T10:02:00+00:00

Just before Christmas I was cleaning a couple of ovens in the Cardiff area and the day before I'd eaten something very spicy. I mean really hot stuff - it's called ENCONA West Indian Sauce. I've got into the habit of putting this stuff on everything but on this day I over did it a touch and then ate the lot. Anway that day in Cardiff I was in desperate need of the loo. If you are out driving around like we are you know that public toilets are now like Chicken's teeth. I mean a whole load of them in Bristol were sold off and one, in a posh area of Bristol, was changed into a house and is shown above and is now for sale fo £260K .

So where is the best place to go now if you need to. Well it's McDonalds of course! They are nearly always the same in layout, though I have noticed that the new ones have better toilets, and whilst there you can now get a decent cup of coffee. So no brainer a great British McCrapper.

Really I try and avoid Customers toilets as I really don't want to go through the process of using their sink etc as I feel that I need to make sure all that is clean too. And I've got to change my gloves and there is that time I got dog pooh on the fluffy carpet in the downstairs toilet. So best to keep to McDonalds or at a push if you can bother with the parking at Tescos.

Whilst we are talking about McDonalds over the Christmas period I went to Germany for short break. In Germany they have a McCafe in the McDonalds where they serve ultra good coffee. So McDonalds can we have this please in the UK?

Oven Cleaning Dip Tank Problems

2012-01-12T09:53:00+00:00

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At this time of year we can get problems with the water pump in our vans. Because it is plastic if the cabin gets too cold and the water freezes in the pump then that can be the end of the pump. The plastic casing of the pump splits and it is a case of getting a new pump. To get around this problem we wrap up the pumps with insulation - we buy the fibre glass in plastic from B & Q. Or if the van is going to be left for a few days we disconnect the pipe from the supply tank and get all the water out of the pump by spraying out what is left in the system giving a dry pump.

Also now our franchisees have come up with another way to ensure that the cabin stays warm - putting in a small 40W heater that you plug in to the mains and it keeps the cabin nice and warm. They are quite cheap, about £14 from Ebay.

Really for us with plastic dip tanks that is our only real problem when it gets cold but if you are an oven cleaner with a propane or gas burner set up then you are looking at some big problems when it gets cold as the burners freeze up and then heating of the solution can take hours and really you just can't get anything done, the racks just don't get clean. So perhaps a little heater might sort this problem out for you too!