In two decades, Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers has rapidly expanded from its first restaurant in Wichita, Kansas, to more than 500 U.S. locations. Six of those locations are owned by Paul Bruggeman across the state of Minnesota.
The fast-casual concept chain has made a name for itself serving cooked-to-order burgers and freshly churned frozen custard in settings of bright-red booths and checkered floors that harken back to diners from the 1940s and 1950s.
Behind its retro charm, Freddy’s embraces modern technology to enhance how it operates and serves customers. One Freddy’s franchise owner recently deployed technology to tackle one of the toughest and messiest tasks in the kitchen – managing fresh and used cooking oil. Using an automated oil management system, the owner has been able to deliver food at the consistent quality that customers expect while reducing costs, safety risks and strenuous work across his restaurants.
A process stuck in the past
Like most, Bruggeman was only familiar with one way of changing oil when he opened his first Freddy’s which was the traditional way of manually emptying oil that’s often still scalding hot, then emptying it into large buckets and lugging those buckets outside to empty them. It can be a messy, time-consuming and dangerous process.
“There’s always a risk of getting burned when cleaning out friers because you really need to get down into them to get all the old oil out,” Bruggeman said. “It’s a tedious process, and the bigger hurry you’re in, the more susceptible you are to having an accident.”
In addition, manually changing oil created quality-control issues. If employees forgot to change the oil or were too busy to do it, the oil would get overused, affecting food quality.
Upgrading to contemporary convenience
When Bruggeman was introduced to the Total Oil Management (TOM) solution, Bruggeman wasn’t familiar with the technology, but he was quickly sold on it when he learned how it could improve operations at his restaurants.
“After talking to some other franchisees, switching to automated oil management was a no-brainer for us,” Bruggeman said. “The costs were right, but the bigger draw for me was the technology’s functionality. It makes oil-changeouts easier, faster and cleaner. It helps reduce our risks by eliminating manual oil-handling.”
Bruggeman chose to install the automated system at all of his Freddy’s franchise locations, which included the TOM customer portal. The cloud-based portal allowed Bruggeman to remotely track oil usage and changeout activities across all of his restaurants.
A new day
The Total Oil Management solution simplified how employees changed oil at the Freddy’s locations.
When we put the new system in, employees almost couldn’t believe how easy it was,” said Bruggeman. “With the push of a button, all the used oil is drained into a return tank, and then we add in the new oil with one more button. It’s all done in a matter of minutes.”
With the ability to track oil usage and filtration, Bruggeman has been able to maximize oil life and reduce oil usage at his restaurants. And because the system helps reduce the risk of burns and fires, he’s also seen his insurance premium drop by tens of thousands of dollars.
“Sometimes when you needed to haul used oil out of the kitchen, there was a risk that a burner would be left on and cause a fire,” Bruggeman said. “Now, everything is push-button. Oil is easily added and removed by the system, and the employee running it doesn’t need to leave the station.”
Tracking oil usage has also been simplified. Before, the restaurants had to manually review orders week by week across six restaurants to understand oil usage. Now, Bruggeman gets an email with details about how much oil they’re using to the pound at each store.
Since switching to automated oil management, Bruggeman has had conversations with fellow Freddy’s franchisees to urge them to adopt the system. “Once you understand what automated oil management changes for your kitchen, your people and your bottom line, it becomes hard to find a reason to not use it,” Bruggeman said. “It makes you more efficient. It makes work easier, safer and cleaner for employees. It lowers your costs. And it just makes your life easier. With this technology, everyone wins.”
Click here to discover how Restaurant Technologies’ Total Oil Management can benefit your kitchen.
