Burger King Cooking Oil Case Study - Restaurant Technologies | Automated Cooking Oil Management

COOKING OIL CASE STUDY

Burger King is one of the most iconic fast-food chains in America—and one of the largest. Today, the burger giant has more than 6,000 restaurants operating across all 50 states.

Almost all these restaurants are owned and operated by independent franchisees like Trinity Corp., which runs seven Burger King locations across southeastern Kentucky. Recently, Trinity Corp. switched from manual to automated oil management at most of its restaurants. Making the move didn’t just improve food quality — it was a boon for the bottom line and workplace safety.

Addressing a Royal Pain

To prepare menu items like fries, onion rings and crispy chicken patties, the restaurant chain uses a custom blend of cooking oil. And proper management of this oil, including filtering and disposing of it according to standard operating procedures (SOPs), is essential to delivering food with the taste and quality that customers expect.

Even when employees followed procedures, there was no guarantee that Mike Dole, director of operations for Trinity Corp., was optimizing cooking oil usage. That’s because oil changeouts were only being dictated using a schedule rather than the quality or frequency of usage of the oil.

Another issue was that disposing of used, hot cooking oil is a strenuous and hazardous task. Employees had to drain used oil from fryers into large buckets and then drag those heavy buckets outside to dispose of the oil in large bins. This manual work could lead to hot oil spilling and splashing onto employees or the floor, creating slip and fall hazards.

Dole empathized with employees who do this work, having done it himself more than 30 years ago in his first job at a restaurant. “I still have scars on my hands from the burns that I got handling used oil,” he said. “But for decades, that’s just been the standard practice for changing oil. I didn’t want that for my teams.”

“The only way I knew if oil was being correctly filtered and changed out was by visiting one of our restaurants to see the fryers in person,” said Mike Dole, director of operations for Trinity Corp. “But routinely visiting restaurants just wasn’t practical given how many restaurants we have and because some of them are hours apart.”

“At all of our Burger King restaurants, we pride ourselves on delivering a good customer experience,” Dole said. “A lot goes into that, from having good employees who provide exceptional customer service, to serving consistently good food. There’s no question that these automated systems have helped us improve the quality of our food, and that’s helped bring in both repeat guests and new guests to our restaurants.”

Ordering Up a Better Process

Dole discovered Restaurant Technologies’ automated approach at an industry conference. Learning how they eliminated the manual handling of oil made investing in the technology an easy decision.

“A fully enclosed system that takes a physical and mental burden off our employees and can deliver savings by improving control over your cooking oil was a no-brainer for our restaurants,” Dole said.

Restaurant Technologies technicians installed new automated oil-management systems with added filtration components at six of Trinity Corp.’s Burger King locations. The systems deliver, store, filter, monitor and dispose of the oil used in the restaurants’ fryers.

Trinity Corp. uses Restaurant Technologies’ cloud-based software to track oil availability and usage. In addition, Dole can remotely monitor usage and filtration activities at each restaurant to determine if employees are following SOPs.

Boosting Profits, Safety and Food Quality

Since switching to automated oil management, Trinity Corp. has increased profits 8% by realizing savings in key areas, including optimizing oil usage. Adopting automation helped the franchisee reduce its cost of goods by 6%.

“With improved visibility and better adherence to the filtration schedule, we’re easily getting an extra two days out of our oil per fryer,” Dole said.

The benefits of the automated system aren’t only financial, it has taken a literal load off employees’ hands and reduced potential exposure to hot oil. Having remote visibility into what’s happening in fryers has also allowed Dole to see when employees are following procedures or deviating from them. This opens up opportunities for training and Dole has introduced incentives for managers who apply best practices for managing oil usage and cost.

“Getting notifications for issues like oil usage and being able to review how long employees filter the oil in the fryers helps us pinpoint where we can provide more training and development,” Dole said.

Dole also views the high level of quality and consistency of the food being served as another reason for his restaurants’ success. Trinity Corp.’s restaurants average about 25% more guests per day than the typical Burger King, a statistic that hasn’t gone unnoticed at the corporate level.