When Your Customers’ Ideal Road Trip Includes Perfect Fries, Will Your Restaurant Be Ready?

Summer means big business for multi-site operators with restaurants located just off the highway. According to the Bank of America 2025 Summer Travel and Entertainment Survey, road trips are popular this year. That presents an opportunity for QSRs, fast-casual restaurants, and others known for their deep-fried foods to make a fantastic impression when travelers stop for a meal or snack. 

To wow these travelers, restaurants must pay attention to their fryer oil. Its quality and condition impact the flavor, texture, appearance, and safety of diners’ favorite chicken or fries. Reheating the oil too often, rather than filtering it or using a fresh batch, can ruin their dining experience. At the same time, fryer oil is among these restaurants’ largest recurring expenses, so discarding it too early is costly. An enterprise with thousands of locations can lose millions of dollars in profits because of disposal scheduling errors.

Comprehensive oil management programs enable restaurants to protect those profits by optimizing oil usage based on Internet of Things (IoT) data. Connecting their fryers and oil tank systems to the cloud, and then monitoring the analytics from their equipment controls, helps restaurants identify numerous improvement opportunities—location by location, manager by manager, and hour by hour. These programs deliver deep operational visibility, insights and alerts. Restaurant managers who capitalize on them can make a meaningful financial impact in multiple ways.

Balancing Oil Quality and Cost Considerations

When restaurants’ signature fried chicken suddenly tastes different, the fryer oil may be to blame. Using it repeatedly to cook batches of chicken can cause a variety of problems over time, such as a buildup of batter and breading in the oil that compromises the food’s quality and safety. 

Restaurant managers know that high concentrations of total polar material (TPM) are one byproduct of that buildup, and set standards to limit them. Comprehensive oil management solutions alert managers to locations violating TPM limits so they can take necessary corrective action. Staff may claim they are filtering or changing the oil on schedule, but if TPM data shows otherwise, their managers can coach or retrain them.

At the same time, if the data reveals that some locations consistently discard their oil too early, wasting money and products, management can also coach their teams.

Readying for the Traveler Influx

As travelers crowd the counter, awaiting popular limited-time-only specials, comprehensive oil management solutions empower restaurants to handle the lines. In these situations, fryer downtime is unacceptable, and comprehensive oil management programs can eliminate it. For example, IoT data may reveal subtle signs of fryer trouble ahead, such as slow heating. Paying attention to these analytics enables managers to order preventive maintenance and preempt costly reactive repairs when equipment fails during busy periods.

Accessing New “Forensics”

Centralized access to location-specific data also aids in “detective work”. For example, a restaurant leader might suspect that a spike in food complaints in one region is related to oil management issues. Data revealing repeated filter skips can confirm that hypothesis and prompt remedial measures.

Elevating the Enterprise

The latest comprehensive oil management solutions give restaurants an even clearer and more detailed view of their entire portfolio and every local operation. This enhanced ability to compare locations, establish performance benchmarks, and zero in on previously hidden sources of waste based on irrefutable data empowers them to initiate fast and effective improvements. For the largest enterprises, the result can be millions of dollars in annual savings, and happy customers on every road trip.