Automated Oil Management Improves Safety and Reduces Waste at 292 Burger Kings

Strategic Restaurants owns 292 Burger King locations across America, but it selected just a few in Florida’s Panhandle for a recent experiment. The goal: to see if it could improve employee safety while optimizing its oil usage. At those sites, Strategic Restaurants handed over oil management to Restaurant Technologies, Inc.® (RTI). 

 

The company receives critical benefits from reducing shortening quantities, equipment maintenance expenses and insurance costs. In terms of employee safety, the change has successfully resulted in one to two fewer insurance claims per year – which can cost upwards of $100,000 each.

 

Behind these results is RTI’s oil management solution, which completely automates the oil-handling process. Instead of relying on employees’ best guesses about when to filter oil – usually based on the way it looks – the system determines the optimal timing that will maximize freshness and minimize waste.

 

Filtering isn’t the only task the system eliminates. Employees used to have to schlep the old oil out to the back of the restaurant and dump it in a container, where it would eventually be picked up and disposed of -- now it’s all automatic – employees just push a button, and new oil is added to the fryer, while old oil is filtered or discarded.

 

The closed-loop system consists of two tanks inside the restaurant – one for fresh oil, and the other for waste oil – and a secure fill-box attached to the restaurant’s exterior. RTI’s trucks deliver fresh oil and remove old oil through the fill-box, eliminating the risks of spillage and waste. Therefore Strategic Restaurants kitchens are now cleaner, a critical standard for Burger King.

 

Administrative responsibilities are also reduced because RTI manages all oil sourcing and removal for the franchise. This efficiency is further enhanced by the RTI’s web-based Total Oil Management (TOM) portal, which gives managers real-time, store-level visibility into oil usage statistics through a simple Internet connection.

 

Since frying oil is one of the costliest, messiest and most-used materials in a quick-service restaurant, the positive effects of RTI’s system stretch beyond the fryer and the employees near it. The path from the fryer to the outdoor dumpster is noticeably cleaner – something employees and restaurant patrons value.