(Orlando, FL)---WARNING: Working in a commercial kitchen may be hazardous to your health. According to the Philadelphia-based Burn Foundation, the foodservice industry experiences the highest number of burns of any employment sector each year. Cooks, food handlers, kitchen workers and wait staff are all listed among the top 50 occupations at risk for on-the-job burn injury.
Among the most dangerous duties is the removal
of oil and cleaning or “boiling out” of deep fryers, a
time-consuming and unpleasant task that is often left to young and
inexperienced teenagers. According to Consumer Health Interactive,
a 16-year-old cook in a Minnesota fast-food outlet was burned over
much of his body as he was pushing a container of hot grease
outside to filter it. As he reached the door, the container slipped
and the lid popped off, spilling the scalding grease all over
him.
FiltaFry’s mobile onsite cooking oil filtration
and fryer management service greatly reduces the constant threat of
accidents, burns and other injuries in a commercial kitchen’s
frying operation by assuming all fryer cleaning and maintenance
tasks, resulting in reduced accident and insurance claims and lower
labor costs because employees have more time for other
responsibilities.
Because FiltaFry’s filtration system increases
the life of cooking oil, some restaurants have seen their oil costs
reduced by as much as 60 percent while at the same time improving
the taste and quality of their fried food.
“We have about eight fryers between both our
locations,” said Eggie Serrano, manager of Froggers Grill & Bar in
Orlando Fla. “I would never go back to our old way of fryer
maintenance because there were too many risks where my cooks were
getting burned. Plus, we’re saving about $110 per week, per store
now and our food tastes much better.”
Deep fryers are a mainstay of countless
commercial kitchens and require constant attention, yet FiltaFry
President Victor Clewes says they often receive the least
attention. “The job always seems to be given to the 16-year-old who
just got hired,” Clewes said.
According to a study by the National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in which data was taken
from a sample of hospitals across the country during a two-year
period, emergency rooms treated almost 45,000 injuries suffered by
teenage restaurant workers and nearly half of the injuries involved
hot grease.
The Burn Foundation says most burns are likely
to occur when employees ignore safety rules, are pressed for time
and take shortcuts. Most restaurants simply throw away their
cooking oil, usually late at night after the kitchen has closed. It
usually takes an hour for the hot oil to safely cool down, but
impatience gets the best of many unlucky workers.
“That’s why there are so many burns,” Clewes
said. “Oil retains heat very well and no one wants to wait as long
as is necessary for it to properly cool
down.”
While FiltraFry helps employers
keep a lid on the costs associated with workplace injuries, the
service can save commercial kitchens considerable amounts of money
through a combination of labor savings, increased equipment life,
and the reduction in oil purchased. Calico Jack’s oyster bar in
Jacksonville, Fla., trimmed its frying oil usage from 360 pounds to
180 pounds each week after it began using FiltaFry, while saving an
average of $40 weekly after subtracting the cost of FiltaFry’s
service.
Dick’s Wings, also in Jacksonville, saw its
frying oil costs drop 60 percent. Aramark, which serves
approximately 4,000 meals per day at the University of Central
Florida is serviced by FiltaFry twice weekly and estimated its
annual cooking oil savings at more than $5,400.
“It’s a great value for the money because in the
long run the service pays for itself,” said James Casazza, manager
of Friday's Front Row in Orlando, Fla. “We spend money to save even
more money.”
Many FiltaFry customers already have built-in
fryer filtration systems, but they are ineffective because they are
gravity-fed systems that simply strain the oil. Conversely,
FiltaFry’s pressurized micro-filtration removes the smallest
contamination particles that cause oil breakdown.
According to Clewes, most built-in filtration
systems are capable of filtering contamination particles to 250
microns in size. FiltaFry filters to a level of two to three
microns. For comparison’s sake, a gram of salt is equal to 60
microns and the human eye can see particles to 40
microns.
“The pre-filtration system within our machine
actually will achieve a much greater level of filtration than
built-in systems,” Clewes said. “And that’s before we’ve passed it
through our cartridge which goes through a
pressure.”
Wearing Kevlar gloves, FiltaFry technicians pump
the 350-degree oil through the filtration system. Because the oil
is filtered while heated, its viscosity is reduced and filtering is
improved. ABC Research Corporation, a full-service food-testing
laboratory in Gainesville, Fla., found that FiltaFry removed 43
percent of the polar compounds that cause the degradation of
cooking oil while it also slowed the build-up of free fatty acids.
Coal tar and transfats are also reduced. The improved quality of
the cooking oil translates into better-tasting
food.
“You can have a great atmosphere in a restaurant
but if you want to bring customers back, the taste of your food is
critically important,” Clewes said. “Most of us have had some
experience in a restaurant where we’ve ordered chicken and it
tastes like fish.”
Accurate fryer temperature checks are also
rarely taken. Thermostats can be far out of calibration, resulting
in food not being cooked properly. It also increases the danger and
risk of oil reaching “flash point” which may cause a fire. FiltaFry
uses accurate thermometer readings to ensure correct temperature
levels.
“Employees will
set the dial at 350 - 365 degrees – the correct temperature
dependant on the type of food – and we’ve found the fryer to
actually be at 400 degrees, which is almost at flash point and they
have no idea,” Clewes said.
