Burger King is one of the most iconic fast-food chains in America. Almost all of these restaurants are owned and operated by independent franchisees like Trinity Corp., which runs seven Burger King locations across southeastern Kentucky.
Mike Dole, director of operations for Trinity Corp., has credited Restaurant Technologies’ Total Oil Management (TOM) solution for creating a safer workplace, improving its bottom line, and consistent food quality. TOM is an automated cooking oil management system that delivers, filters, monitors, collects and recycles cooking oil in a closed-loop system.
Employee Safety
Before TOM, employees had to drain used oil from fryers into large buckets and drag those heavy buckets to the waste oil bins outside. This meant the risk of hot oil spilling and splashing onto employees or on the floor, creating slip and fall hazards. Dole empathized with employees who do this work, having done it himself in previous jobs.
“I still have scars on my hands from the burns that I got handling used oil,” Dole says. “But for decades, that’s just been the standard practice for changing oil. I didn’t want that for my teams.”
In addition, Dole claims that he’s had zero workers’ compensation claims related to oil management since installing TOM.
Efficient Oil Usage
Even when employees followed procedures before TOM, there was no guarantee Trinity Corp. was optimizing cooking oil usage because oil changeouts were being dictated using a schedule rather than the quality or frequency of usage.
With TOM, Dole can now use Restaurant Technologies’ cloud-based software to remotely monitor oil usage and filtration activities to determine if employees are following standard operating procedures. These procedures are essential to maximizing oil life, minimizing waste, and vital to delivering food with the quality that customers expect. Having remote visibility into what’s happening in fryers has allowed Dole to see when employees are following procedures or deviating from them.
“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 says.
Since switching to automated oil management, Trinity Corp. has increased profits 8 percent and reduced its cost of goods by 6 percent by realizing savings in key areas, including optimizing oil usage.
Improved Food Quality
Dole also views the high level of quality and consistency of the food being served as another reason for his restaurants’ success as the restaurants average about 25 percent more guests per day than the average Burger King, a statistic that hasn’t gone unnoticed at the corporate level.
With a solid foundation in place, Trinity Corp. and Restaurant Technologies continue to elevate its brand reputation and, together, are set up for success in the coming years.
To learn more about Restaurant Technologies, visit rti-inc.com.
