Frying High: Elevating Cooking Oil Maintenance with Automation

Recently, one Zaxby’s franchisee decided to change how employees maintain cooking oil by switching to automated oil management. The new system has simplified oil changeouts at the restaurants, while also saving the franchisee money and taking a literal load off employees’ hands.

1788 Chicken owns and operates 60 Zaxby’s locations across eight states. Among the many ways the franchisee supports its restaurants is by helping make sure employees correctly filter and change cooking oil. This helps the business manage its bottom line – especially given the higher cost of cooking oil in recent years – and the quality of the food coming out of its kitchens.

One key to cooking chicken fingers and other menu items like fries, wings and fried pickles to the quality that both Zaxby’s and customers expect is properly maintaining cooking oil. However, ensuring oil is properly filtered and routinely changed every day across many restaurants is no simple task. 

“Having good quality oil in our fryers at all times is imperative,” said J. Cody Neal, vice president of operations for 1788 Chicken. “Otherwise, the chicken fingers that we put out just don’t taste like our chicken fingers.”

Historically, however, it was difficult to know if employees across all 60 restaurants were filtering and changing oil properly, according to company standard operating procedures. Even when Neal was on site at the restaurants, he had little way to know if oil was being properly maintained beyond what he could see and smell.

“The oil has been a hard thing to manage for as long as I've been here,” he said.

Changing cooking oil has also been an arduous, manual process. Restaurant employees first needed to empty still-hot oil into caddies. They then would haul those caddies through the back of the house and often through the parking lot to a dumpster, where they would pour the oil into a grease trap. Finally, they would refill the friers with fresh cooking oil from large jugs. The process was ripe with safety risks for employees and liabilities for the franchisee.

So, it came as no surprise that employees and HR alike had zero pushback when Neal told them he was rolling out a new, automated process to manage all aspects of cooking oil.

Embracing Automation

About four years ago, Neal and his boss at the time started looking into automated oil management technology from Restaurant Technologies. 

They learned that the end-to-end solution would allow employees to empty oil from fryers with the push of a button and refill oil using a wand. There would be no more manual lugging of oil across the kitchen or all the safety concerns that came with that process. Cooking oil also would be bulk delivered to external holding tanks as part of the solution.

Ultimately, the system was deemed an attractive alternative to manual oil handling, and 1788 Chicken opted to deploy it across all 60 of its Zaxby’s restaurants.

“Being able to simplify operations for the back of house was the biggest reason I wanted to make the switch,” Neal said. “It would be a relief to no longer worry about our people hauling oil across our kitchens or the risk of a caddy spilling and creating an unsafe and unsanitary mess.” 

Bulk oil delivery and improved oil maintenance also offered the potential to help 1788 Chicken rein in its oil costs. And with the visibility that Restaurant Technologies’ online Total Oil Management (TOM) portal would provide into each system, the solution presented an opportunity to keep a better eye on oil filtering and changing activities at its restaurants.

Cooking up Savings and Streamlined Operations

Today, 1788 Chicken has installed the automated oil management system at almost 40 of its 60 Zaxby’s locations, with installations scheduled for the remaining restaurants.

With each deployment, a new team discovers how much better life in the kitchen is with one of the hardest jobs now being completely eliminated. J. Cody intends to deploy the solution at any new Zaxby’s restaurants that his business opens or acquires, ensuring he creates an optimal working environment for employees. 

“I check in with the cooks every time I go into a location that has transitioned to the automated system, and they always have positive feedback,” Neal said. “Everybody loves having a wand to pour oil into the fryer and how simple it is to extract the oil. The operation is so incredibly easy for our teams now.”

The system has also helped 1788 Chicken reduce oil costs by about 0.3 percent that may not sound like a lot. But once the system is deployed at all 60 restaurants, it will help the franchisee save more than $500,000 in oil costs annually.

Using the online TOM portal, Neal has also been able to identify when employees are not filtering oil properly or often enough. He can then work with the restaurant team and provide training to help ensure employees follow the right procedures.

“Sometimes I'll see filtering is being done in the morning versus afternoon, which means someone didn't get that task done at nighttime,” Neal said. “That’s a quality issue. And it’s not an ideal situation for employees who arrive the next day to see if they need to change yesterday’s oil. Now, we can make sure we close our restaurants properly. That's been a big impact for us.”

Since 1788 Chicken started deploying Restaurant Technologies’ system, Neal has become an advocate for other Zaxby’s franchises to adopt the technology. 

“I talk about it all the time,’ Neal said. “It just makes sense and I think all Zaxby’s should have the same opportunity to improve their oil management, processes and safety.”