Not much thought is given to what happens to the cooking oil used at restaurants after your food is fried, but it’s a good business for an Akron company that manufactures equipment to recycle it.
Used cooking oil is a hot commodity, so much so that thieves steal it and companies such as Frontline International need to come up with anti-theft systems to stop it.
Used cooking oil, called yellow grease, is used as a biodiesel and feed supplement for chickens, said John Palazzo, president of Frontline International.
The thinking is much different from the early 1990s when yellow grease was considered trash.
Palazzo started his company in 2000 from his Bath Township home after years of working as an engineer for other companies, including Goodyear Aerospace. He eventually landed at a company that originally was a rendering business for fat and bone collected from butchers and became involved in recycled oil.
As collecting used commercial cooking oil became a reality, Palazzo was living in Dallas and the United Kingdom. Then he decided to form his own company in his hometown. The 1979 Revere High School graduate knew there were safety issues for restaurant operators as they deal with disposal of hot oil. The factors included spill potential and workers suffering potential back injuries from hoisting a bucket of oil into a holding tank.
Now, restaurants buy some models from Frontline and its competitors where, with a push of a button, the used cooking oil goes from the fryer to the holding tank or a caddy system can suck the oil into a portable tank to transport it to a larger tank.
“We have taken the dirtiest job in the kitchen and now you push a button,” Palazzo said.
Most manufacturers in the cooking oil storage industry sell equipment to store the oil and also offer a service to collect oil and dispose of it. Frontline only manufactures the storage equipment as well as a distribution model that takes boxes of oil and loads it into the fryer.
Frontline does not collect the oil after it is stored. Rendering companies who do that are now paying customers with rebates to take their yellow grease.
But Frontline International, with its offices in the Ascot Industrial Park in northern Akron, feels it has come up with what Palazzo calls a “game changer.” It’s a new product that it has a patent pending. It electronically monitors the levels of cooking oil in the storage tank and allows the operator and Frontline to open or close the valve on the tank remotely from an iPhone or iPad to prevent theft. The system is also equipped with an alarm that will go off if oil is taken from the unit without permission.
The monitoring system also allows for restaurant operators and oil collectors to know when a storage tank is full and ready for retrieval.
It is known as the M-3 Data Management System (for measure, monitor and manage). Frontline won the 2013 Kitchen Innovations Award from the National Restaurant Association in March and Palazzo was given a 2013 Visionary award by Smart Business this fall.
The idea, Palazzo said, is to sell subscriptions eventually for the M-3 monitoring system.
Palazzo said his company, which has less than $10 million in yearly sales, has a large growth potential, but he’s limited until he can find a strong financing partner or bank to help.
“The potential is there,” he said. “Our opportunities are somewhat constrained by our cash requirements,” he said. The privately owned company employs 12 at its Akron headquarters and three at an office in Puerto Rico.
Sales are national and international, including Singapore, Australia, the United Arab Emirates and Puerto Rico.
Clients include locations of Burger King, Wendy’s, Church’s, Five Guys, KFC, Sonic, McDonald’s and Jack in the Box.
At its Akron manufacturing facility and headquarters, workers hand-weld and form the holding units from raw materials purchased in Northeast Ohio.
Hallrich Inc., the Stow-based Pizza Hut franchise with 85 restaurants in Northeast Ohio, has been using some of Frontline’s storage tanks in about 40 of its stores, said Michele Miller, purchasing and project supervisor.
Miller said she’s been installing some Frontline tanks in several Pizza Hut restaurants that have the Wing Street chicken wing line and use fryers.
“We want to make sure we dispose of the oil correctly,” she said. “It’s also a safety issue. We have a caddy, so our people are not at all touching the hot oil and they’re not going to spill it on the floor and get grease down into the store’s drains.
“We’re able to recycle that oil and get paid for it, so from a cost perspective, it helps us offset the cost of the frying oil and making sure it’s emptied so our customers have fresh products,” she said.
Miller said she liked that she was able to switch some of her tanks to a local vendor.
“We want to take care of the local folks who buy our pizza and we try to deal with local providers, if at all possible. It’s always nice to have someone who you can shake their hand to deal with,” she said.
Hallrich does not use Frontline’s new M-3 system, but Miller says she has had some stores with cooking oil theft issues.
“There’s people that go around that have trucks that are not authorized to do it and steal the oil. Those vats that used to sit out by the dumpster, they would go and steal all the grease. It’s a crazy industry; there’s more money in trash and grease than anyone would know,” she said.
Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/blinfisher and see all her stories at www.ohio.com/betty.