Behind the counter
Back-of-House Door and Hardware Service in Charlotte, NC
Tell us what the opening is between, and roughly how busy it gets. Call (984) 253-8579.
Impact damage check
Sorts dents and holes in a steel leaf against the typical manufacturer listing limits for filling, which decide whether an impact is a repair or a replacement conversation.
Answer what you can see; the rule set applied is printed in full below.
| Condition | What it means |
|---|---|
| Hole through the face sheet | Not fillable. Wants listed repair material or a new leaf; filler in a hole is a paint-deep fix that fails at the first cart |
| Dent shallower than 1/8 in | Commonly inside manufacturer listing limits for filling |
| Dent 1/8 in or deeper | Usually past typical filling limits; the leaf wants assessing rather than filling |
| Crease, or leaf no longer flat | A leaf that has lost its flatness is a replacement conversation, not bodywork |
| Fire label present | The limits narrow and the label governs, not the technician; a leaf modified past its listing has stopped being a rated assembly |
Typical limits vary by manufacturer and the door's own listing is the authority. Armour after the repair — kick plates, edge guards, cart bumpers — is the highest-return part of most back-of-house jobs.
The door between the kitchen and the floor is the hardest-working thing in the building
It gets shouldered open by people carrying plates, kicked open by people carrying trays, and hit by carts on the way back. It runs at that rate for the whole of service, every service. Nothing else in a restaurant, a grocery or a hotel takes comparable punishment, and it is almost never specified for it, because at fit-out it was a line on a drawing that looked identical to the office doors.
Back-of-house work we take on
Interior service openings in hospitality, grocery, retail and healthcare-adjacent buildings across Charlotte. This is the line where the cycle-count argument stops being theoretical, and it is also the line where the right answer is most often a different door rather than a repaired one.
Double-acting doors and their hardware
Swing both ways, run on pivots or double-acting hinges, usually have no latch at all, and fail through the pivot and the hinge geometry rather than through anything you can see. A double-acting leaf that has started to stand ajar instead of centring is a pivot problem, and continuing to use it in that state accelerates the damage.
Impact damage and cart strikes at the bottom rail
Constant on this line. On steel leaves shallow denting can often be filled within the manufacturer's listing, commonly under an eighth of an inch deep, but a hole through the face sheet cannot be filled and wants listed repair material or a new leaf. Adding armour after the repair matters more here than anywhere else in a building.
Closers that keep getting adjusted by whoever is nearest
Back-of-house closers get turned with a butter knife, a screwdriver, and occasionally a set of pliers, by people trying to make a door stop slamming during a rush. The result is a valve seat that no longer seals and a closer that will not hold any setting. It is a replacement rather than an adjustment, and it is worth knowing that before somebody has another go at it.
Locks and levers on stockroom and office openings
The lock is rarely the first thing to fail on a high-cycle door, but on back-of-house openings it takes abuse that lock hardware was not designed for — hanging weight, being used as a pull, being forced with a key that has been reground. Bored and mortise lock hardware is graded under ANSI/BHMA A156.2 and A156.13 respectively, and the grade a building was fitted out with is often the first thing worth checking when the same lock has failed twice.
Hinges losing vertical alignment
A high-cycle leaf hanging on standard butt hinges will eventually sag, and the sag shows up first as a strike that no longer aligns. Continuous hinges spread the load down the whole edge and are the usual right answer on an opening that has already eaten two sets of butts.
Kitchen-side environment
Heat, steam, grease and washdown attack finishes and get into hardware in a way that no interior office door experiences. Hardware selection on the kitchen side of a pass is a different exercise from hardware selection on the dining side of the same opening.
Openings that should be a different door entirely
Sometimes the correct recommendation is not a repair. A leaf that has been repaired twice on a high-cycle pass is telling you the specification was wrong, and the useful conversation is about performance level and armour rather than about what to fix this time.
Latching where the opening is also an exit
Back-of-house doors are frequently in a means of egress without anybody thinking of them that way, particularly rear service doors. Where that is the case the operating force limits and the single-motion release rule apply exactly as they do at the front of the building, regardless of the fact that only staff use it.
What decides the number back of house
| Driver | Typical effect on scope | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware only | Smallest scope | Common where the leaf is still flat and the frame is sound |
| Leaf damaged past filling | New leaf against existing frame | Lead time depends on stock size, prep and whether a label is involved |
| Pivot or double-acting hardware | Moderate | Often needs the leaf off, which means scheduling around service |
| Continuous hinge retrofit | Moderate | Frequently the right call on an opening that has sagged twice |
| Work must happen outside service hours | Raises it | Nearly always the case in restaurants and grocery |
| Second repair on the same opening | Changes the conversation entirely | At this point the question is specification, not repair |
No figures published. The gap between a hinge adjustment and a correctly specified replacement leaf on the same opening is very wide.
How back-of-house calls run
Traffic is asked about before make and model
Because on this line the traffic is the diagnosis.
Scheduled around the building's day
Nobody sensible works a kitchen pass at half past twelve, and the visit gets planned around service rather than dropped into it.
Willing to say the door is the wrong door
Which is a harder sentence than quoting another repair, and it is usually the one that ends the cycle.
How a back-of-house call runs
- 1. What is the opening between
Kitchen and floor, stockroom and sales, corridor and dock. That single answer sets the expected failure mode.
- 2. How busy, honestly
An order of magnitude is enough. Nobody needs a counted figure.
- 3. Has it been repaired before
If yes, and by whom, and what was done. A second failure on the same opening changes the goal from repair to specification.
- 4. Scheduled around service
Agreed with whoever actually runs the floor rather than with whoever signs the invoice.
- 5. Assembly read, not just the complaint
Frame, leaf flatness, hinge alignment, pivot condition, closer state, strike, and whether the opening is in a means of egress.
- 6. Armour added where it will pay for itself
Kick plates, edge guards, cart bumpers. The least interesting part of the job and frequently the part with the best return.