Polished concrete can work in a commercial kitchen, but a standard retail-grade polish will not. The kitchen adds three loads a showroom floor never sees: hot oil, daily degreasing and slip-resistance obligations that a high-gloss surface fights against.

Where it holds up

• Dry prep and plating areas with no standing water.
• Back-of-house corridors, dish drop zones with a proper drain slope.
• Open kitchens and dining floors where the look matters.

Where it fails

• Directly around fryers and ranges without a grease containment detail.
• Walk-in cooler floors and any slab with a moisture problem.
• Areas washed down with a hose and strong alkaline degreaser daily.

The specification that makes it work

Item	Target	Why
Densifier	Lithium, two coats, full cure	Reduces porosity and oil penetration
Finish	Honed to 400-800 resin, not mirror gloss	Keeps wet slip resistance usable
Slip resistance	Wet PTV 36+ or R10 equivalent, tested	Documented defence in an incident
Joints	Semi-rigid epoxy filler, flush	Stops grease wicking into joints
Slope	1.5-2% to drains, no ponding	Standing water destroys any finish

Slip resistance is the real constraint

A mirror finish on a wet kitchen floor is a liability. Specify a honed finish and test it wet with a pendulum or a tribometer, then record the number in the handover pack. Anti-slip treatments that add a film will haze the floor within months under degreasing; mechanical texture from the last diamond step is more durable.

Cleaning regime

Daily: neutral cleaner, flat mop, two buckets. Weekly: diluted high-pH degreaser on grease zones with 10 minutes dwell, then extract. Monthly: burnish the dry zones only. Never use a hose-down with undiluted caustic; it strips densifier over months and leaves a dull, sticky surface that attracts more soil.

Joints and edges

Grease finds joints first. Cut joints 3-5 mm wide, clean them dry, and fill with a semi-rigid epoxy matched to the floor temperature range. At wall edges use a sealant that tolerates movement, not a rigid filler that cracks in the first winter.

Degreasing without stripping the finish

Kitchen grease is the fastest way to destroy a polished floor, and the fastest way to destroy it is with the cleaner chosen to remove the grease. Alkaline degreasers at full strength will lift a guard in two or three applications and start etching the cream layer if they are allowed to dwell and dry.

Grease source	Cleaner	Dwell	Pad	Frequency
Daily cooking aerosol on general floor	Neutral 1:64	No dwell	White	After each shift
Fat build-up near fryers and ranges	Alkaline degreaser 1:32	5-10 min, never allowed to dry	Red, then white rinse pass	Weekly
Oil dropped at the fryer station	Degreaser 1:16 spot	2-3 min	Hand pad	As it happens
Floor drain surround and wet zones	Degreaser plus sanitiser	10 min	Brush for joints	Daily
Grease film left after a missed shift	Degreaser 1:32, double pass	5 min each	Red then white	Recovery only

Two rules turn that table into a floor that lasts. First, rinse with clean water after every degrease and extract it, because alkaline residue plus moisture keeps reacting. Second, never let a degreaser dry on the surface: a dried alkaline film is what produces the white, chalky patches that look like efflorescence but are chemical damage.

Where a guard is in place, expect to re-apply it every 9-12 months in a kitchen instead of the 12-24 months a retail floor gets. Kitchen floors under a guard also need the burnish cycle kept short, because grease that sits on a film for a week is harder to remove than grease on bare densified concrete.

Slip resistance testing and records

Slip resistance is the constraint that decides which finish a kitchen can have, and it is the one item most often missing from the handover folder. A high-gloss kitchen floor can pass on a dry test and fail the moment a dishwasher drains across it, which is exactly the condition a claim will be based on.

• Test wet, not dry. Pendulum test values on a wet polished surface typically run 10-20 units below the dry reading, and the wet number is the one that matters in a kitchen.
• Test at the points where water actually appears: fryer station, dishwash return, freezer door threshold and the drain surround. A single reading at the middle of the room proves nothing.
• Record the method, the instrument, the calibration date and the reading at each point. A number without a method is not evidence.
• Re-test after any change in finish, guard or cleaning chemical, because all three shift the wet value.
• Where the wet value is marginal, the fix is usually a finer finish or an anti-slip treatment in the wet zone, not a coarser grind across the whole floor.

Put the readings in the handover document next to the gloss readings. When a customer asks in year three why the floor feels different, the record is what separates a maintenance issue from a warranty claim.

If the client wants the polished look but the kitchen runs wet and greasy all day, specify honed concrete in the kitchen and polished in the dining area. One finish across both is how projects end up with a floor nobody is happy with.