Work-related burns are one of the leading causes of occupational injuries in the restaurant industry. 

One of the most common injuries are scald burns, which is when the skin comes in contact with hot liquid or steam. Scalds from water are very frequent in the restaurant industry and can cause third degree burns.  However, scalds from hot oil are generally more severe than those from water.  This is because oil heats to higher temperatures, and oil is thicker so it may remain on the skin for a longer period of time.  With the constant growing of the food service industry, keeping employees safe in the kitchen has become one of the highest priorities for restaurants owners. 

Another serious work-related injury in restaurants is slip and falls.  Many serious burns occur when employees slip and reach to steady themselves.  This action often can knock hot liquids off of counters and stove tops on to the worker.  Another instance could occur if an employee is carrying full containers of hot liquids. 

Among the most dangerous job duties of a restaurant employee is the removal of oil and cleaning or “boiling out” of deep fryers.  This task is very time-consuming, unpleasant, and unsafe.  However, the Filta Group’s FiltaFry service greatly reduces, and almost completely eliminates, the dangers behind managing commercial deep fryers.  With its unique machine and safety equipment, FiltaFry’s mobile onsite cooking oil filtration and fryer management service system completely takes the responsibility of dealing with the deep fryers away from the employees.  The service includes filtering the cooking oil, discarding of the waste oil, cleaning the deep fryer, and calibrating the thermostats, while making sure the surrounding area is clean and hazard free.  Thus, by relieving the employees of the duties of cleaning the deep fryers, FiltaFry gets rid of majority of restaurant related injuries.  Employees will no longer have to deal with hot deep fryer oil, which cuts down on scalds and burns, as well as possible slip and falls.

In the last few months, Filta has added quite a few stadiums and arenas to its growing customer list in the sports and entertainment market segment.

These include Fenway Park, Raymond James Stadium and the Xcel Energy Center, home of the Boston Red Sox, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Minnesota Wild respectively.

Local Boston Franchise Owner, Paul Reissfelder, says “We’re pleased to be working with Aramark at such an historic ballpark [Fenway Park]. They really saw value in not only the reduction of oil usage, but also in the improvement in the employee safety.”

…and is predicted to rise further

As you can see from the chart below, the price of crude soybean oil (and other oils like canola) has more than doubled in the last 18 months, from $0.28¢ to $0.56¢ per pound.

This trend is predicted to continue as increased demand for food from emerging countries like China, India and Brazil drives the price up. 

“We will all be paying a lot more for the cooking oil that we use in our fryers in the coming years,” says Filta COO Tom Dunn. “One of the biggest tools we have is to make the oil last longer and improve the frying practices.   Our FiltaFry service can help.”

Filta provides an onsite service for the micro-filtration of cooking oil and the vacuum based cleaning of deep fryers. 

Filta already services over 5,000 customers every week all over the USA.

The 2010 World Series was played between the Texas Rangers and the San Francisco Giants and located throughout the teams’ stadiums are concession stands, bistros and portable food carts all selling huge amounts of fried food.  With the sellout crowds that come with the World Series, there is a lot of cooking oil that needs to be managed; either filtered and reused or recycled into biodiesel… enter Filta Environmental Kitchen Solutions to help stadiums go green.

With the service being offered through Franchise Owners in over 40 states, Filta provides its services to many other Major League Baseball teams including the Colorado Rockies (Coors Field) and the Kansas City Royals (Kauffman Stadium).

In addition to baseball, Filta is also helping basketball, football, and hockey teams go green.  The Portland Trail Blazers (Rose Garden Arena), Cleveland Cavaliers (Quicken Loans Arena), Washington Redskins (FedEx Field), Cleveland Browns, Colorado Avalanche (Pepsi Center),Tampa Bay Lighting (St Pete Times Forum Arena), Atlanta Falcons (Georgia Dome) and the Minnesota Twins (Target Field) and  are all benefitting from Filta’s offerings.

Filta, however, doesn’t stop at professional teams.  The company has also branched out their services to reach college football.  These teams include the Tigers, at Auburn University, the University of Virginia Cavaliers, and the University of Arkansas Diamondbacks.

Sports complexes are the perfect customers for Filta’s services, with most being regularly used for many other events, such as concerts and racing.  Each stadium and arena contains numerous concession stands full of hot dogs, chicken fingers, and, of course, lots of French fries.  Some complexes even have full size restaurants, providing larger varieties and amounts of food.

Filta Franchise Owner David Cloutier in Minnesota says “After servicing the Target Field during its inaugural season, there was a site walk through by the concessions management company – Denver North Corp (DNC).  Based upon the results that they observed in the 46 fryers there was an immediate request for a proposal at the Target Center, home of the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA team.  The results of our FiltaFry service speak for themselves!”

With the FiltaFry service originating in the UK, soccer was the original sport Filta serviced as President Jason Sayers explains. “We have always serviced a whole cross section of customers including stadiums.  In fact, we have serviced Arsenal Football (soccer) Club in the UK for years.  Sports teams conjure up emotional responses from many of our Franchise Owners as they each support their own teams and have good natured rivalries all the time.  At the end of the day though, the main thing is that all of our customers are being serviced well and we’re helping them go green.”

Although the mainstay of Filta’s business is still restaurants, its services are used at stadiums, universities, hospitals, hotels and anywhere else with fryers; helping everyone go green.

Filta Franchise Owners have helped customers recycle almost a third of a billion pounds of cooking oil and has operations in over 20 countries.   For more information visit www.filta.com.

Over the past few months, Filta has participated in tradeshows and conventions across the country including The Florida Restaurant and Lodging Show in Orlando, Florida, the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago, Illinois, the Louisiana Foodservice Expo in New Orleans, Louisiana and other local food and hospitality shows.

At the beginning of November, Filta will travel once again; this time to Los Angeles, California for The West Coast Franchise Expo to demonstrate how they have built their company with the help of franchising.

Tradeshows are a very useful tool to help increase brand awareness and get a business’s name out into the public.  These shows let companies in a specific industry showcase their latest products and services; as well as let them study other businesses and examine present market trends.  Filta uses these expos as an opportunity to educate potential customers about their services and to help the company grow. 

So far, Filta’s involvement in tradeshows has been nothing but positive.  With thousands of potential customers passing your booth, how could it not be? 

The Filta company and its franchise owners benefit from tradeshows.  At the shows, different franchise representatives are always present from the local areas, giving interested customers a chance to speak with the franchisee they will be directly dealing with.  This provides the consumer with a personal feel to the company, helping them to remember Filta above others.

Not only are tradeshows and expos a very useful tool to spread a company’s name, but they can be very enjoyable as well.  Check out some pictures of the Filta team at their shows.

The BFA (British Franchise Association) posted the latest FiltaFry case study in the UK.

The FiltaFry Franchise is an Assiciate Member of the BFA.

“Working for myself is fantastic!”

Shock redundancy hit former bindary technician Dean Martin when Norwich’s New Jarrold Printing closed in September 2006. However, turning lemons into lemonade, he used his new-found freedom to commit to a FiltaFry franchise.

“I was disappointed being made redundant, but I miss the people more than the work,” says Dean. “Working for myself is absolutely fantastic. The main benefit is being your own boss, choosing what hours you want to work and when. I just like being in control. I am dealing with the same customers on the same days each week and I like going out to look for more work to get more income. I’ve got a good rapport with the customers and I have got no one to answer to. It has turned out being made redundant was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

FiltaFry franchisees provide a cooking oil filtration service to restaurants and hotels. The national shortage of cooking oil and massive price increases mean that FiltaFry’s environmentally friendly service, which prolongs the life of cooking oil, is in high demand. “I have built the business up from basically nothing to working Monday to Friday, with around 30 clients,” says Dean. “I could get more if I wanted too, if I started earlier in the mornings or worked later at night. The major bonus of this business is that there is no competition or any other business coming close to what I do in East Anglia. There are no other businesses doing what I do in East Anglia.”

Take a look at the video of the day in the life at Filta. It was recorded on the Friday of a recent traning course. See the people in the office, some new Franchise Owners in training and the famous training BBQ.

Nobody was injured (or taken to hospital with food poisoning) during the making of this movie.

Filta’s Booth (5360) was busy during the NRA tradeshow and convention in the Windy City. 

It was nice to meet so many existing Filta customers – some as far away as Panama – hello Omar!  It was a really good showing for Filta, and we decided it was the perfect place to unveil a 7’ cutout of the bad oil fighting superhero FiltaMan. 

FiltaMan was designed as part of the creative direct mail campaign for the second half of this year.  Keep your eyes open for more sightings of FiltaMan and several other new characters coming soon.

More Filta Franchise Owners complete their training at Filta’s USA headquarters in Orlando, FL.

These vans are ready to provide FiltaFry, FiltaCool and FiltaBio services.