RTI owns and installs all of MaxLife equipment. The company also takes responsibility for training employees on how to operate the system. Installation is quick. Kiesel says one can be installed at night and operational by morning.

A standard RTI contract can range from five, seven, or ten years. Each night, the fresh oil tank reports to a secure server how much oil has been used. This information is then funneled to RTI depots and sent to a secure Web site accessible to store managers. This way two sets of eyes are on the store’s oil supply levels. RTI can also monitor whether a store is using its oil efficiently. Too much oil per pound of food and you are wasting money. Too little and you are serving dry, Kiesel says.

RTI also buys its oil through RTI. The price is based on soybean oil prices from the Chicago Board of Trade, Kiesel says.

Currently RTI clients include a mix of McDonald’s franchisees, several Backyard Burger locations, grocery stores, and institutional foodservice concepts. RTI is after any facility that fries food.

Backyard Burger Vice President of Corporate Operations Bill Boller says he was sold on the RTI oil management system after an approximately 90-day trial period. The Memphis-based fast-casual chain now uses the service in seven of the 44 corporate restaurants.

“The general managers love it, they say it is a great system and so much easier for them,” Boller says.

Boller likes the system for two reasons—it is cleaner and it saves his company money on labor. “There might be a few extra dollars in hard costs, but when you figure in soft costs you come out ahead,” Boller says.

Unfortunately, RTI does not have a hub that can service Memphis, home to most of Boller’s units. But it can service about 80 percent of the U.S. restaurant population.

And as the industry shifts, tran fat free cooking oil has also become a focus at RTI. The company offers clients three types. “Zero trans fat oils are the topic of the day in the food industry,” Kiesel says. “Essential to this discussion is the quality, taste, and performance of these oils, the ability to adequately supply these oils, and finally, the ability to improve this back-of-the-house process from a cost and quality standpoint.

An RTI competitor, Ohio-based Frontline International, offers essentially the same service, but without the oil sales bundle.

Frontline's president, John Palazzo, says his company manufactures oil management systems that work like a mirror image of RTI’s, but does not tie in the oil delivery and removal into the equation, giving its customers the freedom to negotiate their own contracts for those services. In addition, Palazzo says the money a restaurant could get for recycling its used oil is lost under an RTI agreement, where the waste belongs to RTI, not the restaurant.

Palazzo's company's other niche is providing the oil delivery service where RTI doesn't have distribution centers, like Hawaii.