Hello ny name is Graham Rogers and welcome to my oven cleaning business blog. I have been writing this blog for four years and as of February 2012 this blog has had over 70,000 page views. I have written about most of my experiences and frustrations with regards to my oven cleaning business. We have grown from just me in the van to now having five vans. I still regularly clean ovens and AGA cookers.
Since October 2010 we have been selling franchises and so now this blog includes franchisee training and experiences too. Also there is also an emphasis on AGA cookers in this blog as I’ve had one in my house for 15 years, love them, and it was really the main reason I started this business back in late 2003 early 2004. So why don’t you join us?
Graham Rogers February 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
We have been cleaning ovens and AGA cookers in the county of Devon since I started OvenGleam in 2004. Really the big reason for starting the business was because I wanted to
Church Green, Devon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
capture the ‘Devon AGA market’. So I started off with lots of lovely colourful, but expensive adverts, in Devon Life. They were hugely expensive and really I should have ditched them sooner rather than later as the return on them wasn’t enough to justify the adverts and I spent lots of time travelling to the extremes of Devon cleaning AGAs!
Now in Devon we are regularly cleaning in East Devon, places like Exeter, Exmouth, Sidmouth, Seaton, Axminster, and in West Dorset places such as Lyme Regis and Charmouth. And also places like Tiverton, Cullompton, Honiton, Crediton, Culmstock, Uffculme.
So if you are looking to get your AGA cooker, or your range cooker or your normal oven cleaned in these areas please give us a call on 0800 45 82 357 and we will be please to make that appointment to clean it for you.
Last week I interviewed some people for our job vacancy for an oven cleaning operative – with no experience required! We have a process in place that has worked well for us over the years and we find that we can usually get a few people together for an interview pretty quickly if we need too. So we did the advertising and then arranged the interviews for Tuesday and Friday of last week, Tuesday because it had been the Bank Holiday weekend for May Day.
It started off very well with the first guy getting there at 0750 and doing a fabulous interview, with the only issue being that he already had a job and would have to give 4 weeks notice. Then the other person in the
The Interview (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
afternoon slot didn’t even bother to turn up. We phoned him and there was no answer. He then texted the main phone number saying he’d got a missed call. We rang him and asked him why he hadn’t turned up. He said it was too far to get too. What he meant was that has he didn’t have a car he’d have to catch two buses, one to get to the centre of Bristol and then one out of Bristol to us, to get to the interview and he couldn’t be bothered with it. So, so much for trying to give a local Bristol youngster a job – he was 19.
The next interview day things went okay but one person, a lady who this time was in her late thirties didn’t turn up for the interview – again we left her a sarcastic message on her phone and this time she didn’t reply at all. The two that did turn up were okay though one had some points on his licence and the other one was as my wife and our office manager put it ‘lovely’. So I arranged for him to go out with our operative Matt the next day so that he could have a look at the job and decide whether it was for him and asked Matt for some feedback. Apparently the guy got stuck in, asked the right things and Matt liked him. Today I got an email from him saying that he was keen to get the job.
So today I did a couple of reference checkes and then I offered him the job and he starts on Wednesday of this week. So this week it means that I am going to be doing a couple of days training, and then then I am going to put him out with the other guys to get some more experience before letting him loose on his own, which should be in about two to three weeks time all being well.
I’m keeping the first interviewee in reserve just incase something happens…
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I’ve been out cleaning for the last week or so. I haven’t really done very much cleaning since January and was getting bored sat in the office so I am really glad to be out cleaning
again. One of our operatives has left and another is on holiday so it means I am going to be cleaning for a while until we get a new operative. The adverts are out for a new operative and surprising we haven’t had many applicants yet so hopefully we will get some more to get some choice. I am going to be interviewing on Tuesday after the Bank Holiday and have two interviews arranged.
At the beginning of the week I had a great day cleaning a 3 oven AGA in the Cotswolds (its one I have cleaned three times before) and this was followed by a standard double oven near Bristol. We regularly do AGA cleaning Cotswolds.
I was out cleaning on Thursday and was back in the office on Friday. The Thursday cleans were a bit tough has I had three standard double ovens and the last one had a hob and extractor as well as the oven. The first was a Creda and was very dirty and as it was a Creda I had to strip it down completely, taking all the self cleaning panels off to dip them, and I even took the self cleaning panel off the roof which I only do once in a while (normally I clean it in situ) as its a real sod to get back on. Anyway yes I had a bit of problem getting it back on but in the end everything looked super. The customer wanted me to tighten up the handle on the oven door so I had to do a strip down of the door to get this sorted. In all it all added up and when I left the job I was running fifteen minutes behind schedule – I was allocated one and half hours to do the job in our scheduler. But as I had been given more than enough travelling time to get to the next job I managed to get there 10 minutes early and get cracking with that job. It was a standard NEFF double oven and wasn’t terribly dirty so I managed to do everything in an hour. So I go to the last job an hour and half ahead of schedule (again generous travelling time) and again it was the same NEFF double oven which again wasn’t terribly dirty and a hob, and an extractor. The extractor gauzes were really greasy but after dipping them they came up very well. In all I managed to get everything done in just over an hour and a quarter and then I went back home. So I got home at 1420 which was two and half hours ahead of the time I should have got back. But somethings getting ‘easier’ ovens means finishing quicker though the reverse is also true getting really dirty ovens means a killer day and running over. But usually there is a mix of good ones and bad ones and it is just a case of making hay whilst you can.
But in all I’d rather have the AGA cooker then a single oven or standard oven day like the day at the beginning of the week in the Cotswolds.
Related articles
- AGA Cleaning Sussex (theovencleaningbusiness.co.uk)
7 months on, 2 AGA Total Controls, 4 new boiling plates, 3 new PCB’s, flue re-routed .. and it is still not working…….am I the only one ? Help! Customer services won’t call me – no one will phone and apologise! What do I do now?!!!! Is everyone elses Total Control working? How I regret getting rid of my old AGA.
Packaging Hager (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We often use the company Espares for spare parts. We have used them recently as we needed a repplacement inner door for a bosch oven that just fell apart when we went to take the door apart to clean inisde the door – not something that has happened before so we think there may have been some sort of damage to it already. Anyway it shatterd into a miillion pieces and we told the customer we’d get them a new one.
On contacting espares they told us it would take four weekes to get the part and it would cost £150. The custoner was okay with this as she could use the other oven of the cooker. So about four weeks latter we got the part and we arranged to fit it. We got there opened the box and then discovered that there was a very small chip on the glass on the corner of the door. The customer wanted a new one, so did we. The chip of glass wasn’t in the packaging so really I think it had been packed like it. The main point though was the packaging used by Espares was very poor just some polystyrene bits on the front of the glass and the sides – really for me to make it 100% it should have had some bubble wrap on it too.
But into the post the parcel went back to espares. Espares were very efficient and arranged the return in a instant giving me a return label by email; I just walked across the road to the post office with the parcel and posted it back.
We got a replacement door two weeks later. But the again the packaging was the same but the door was 100% – so out to fit we went an everything was fine a happy customer at last.
Here is a new video for AGA Cleaning in Surrey and North Hants. I am creating new videos for our franchisees from bits of films that I recorded whilst they were on their training with us. This one of Brad Walsh our North Hants and West Surrey franchisee was taken outside our office on the village green. As we had problems with the traffic we first of retreated to another spot and then finally back into the office to record the film which I used on his three videos which I uploaded. But looking back at it isn’t bad.
So here it is a short video which with a few tweaks should be topping Youtube and Google for the keywords.
So if you are looking to get your AGA cleaned in Surrey and North Hampshire area contact Brad Walsh and he will be glad to help you. 0800 45 82 357
Image via Wikipedia
Well it has just dawned on me that Easter is coming very soon. And the Mother in Law effect that gets people to clean their oven for Christmas will be apparent again. So if you are thinking that your oven looks horrid, just horrid well what do you think your Mother-in-law is going to think about it?
Speaking to a friend of ours who is the Mother-in-law she told us that when she visits her son in Australia not only does she take over the kitchen and do all the cooking she also gives the house a complete clean from top to bottom. Apparently her daughter in law doesn't like this very much and has suggested that our friend stay in a hotel down the road. Well our friend says "well I go all that way to see my son and grandchildren and it's better if I'm there all the time. I mean I need to see them all of the time I can get as I don't see them that often". So in all she smiles and gets on with being the mother-in-law!
So there you go the mother may want to clean your oven for you. So get it done before she arrives if you don't want her to do it for you. Then she won't have anything to do. 
.
Image via Wikipedia
We were talking the other week about the vans and how people react to them. When I started I got my first van sign written but eighteen months later we got another van and then another three and because there wasn't much time between getting them all we didn't get them all sign written. Then we got the second van sign written and we put on it a picture that I have used in a lot of local marketing campaigns: a picture of an oven gleam fairy. She has a wand, a shiny oven and she is wearing sun glasses. It really looks the business though today we don't use it so much. We thought this was going to look great on the van. But sadly it didn't and still doesn't. Yes we still have the van with the fairy on and now it is pretty faded. I have been meaning to get it changed but the van it is on is our oldest van now and I think well if I spend £200 on it how long will the van last? The other vans weren't sign written for what seemed like an age but when we got them all sign written it really made a difference in the number of calls we got from people seeing the van. Really we should have got it done sooner.
So the reactions we get are in traffic jams at the traffic lights people get out of their car knock on the window and say "Have you got a leaflet mate?". Or they get out of the car and using their phone take a picture of the van so they've got the number on the phone that way. All seems odd to me as why don't they just remember or write down the name of the company? With a plan van though we wouldn't get any of it. So a sign written van wins every time.
