Archive for the ‘restaurant kitchen’ tag
Slips, Falls and Burns… major accidents in kitchens
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.
MLB Stadiums Step Up Their Green Game with Filta
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.
Showing off at Tradeshows
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.
Filta Cleans Up Where Others Won’t
Article from Stanford Advocate
Michael C. Juliano, Staff Writer
Neil Groglio of Westport and Matt Neeley of Shelton are not afraid to take care of the dirty work.
Since launching a Filta Environmental Kitchen Solutions franchise in September, the business partners have been cleaning out deep fryers and purifying the oil at area restaurants through the use of a specially designed filtration machine.
“We thought it was a very interesting business, a little different from what you find out there,” said Groglio, a middle school teacher and former rental car company owner. “I call it a dialysis machine for cooking oil.”
The franchise has three technicians each with vans and oil-cleaning devices, which are about the size of a shopping cart, making stops at some 80 clients in Fairfield, New Haven and Hartford counties, Groglio said.
“We take the most dangerous and disagreeable job out of the kitchen,” said Groglio, who notes that most restaurant accidents involve maintaining deep fryers. “Everyone hates doing that job because it’s disgusting.”
The weekly cleaning process, which takes about 15 minutes a fryer and takes place while the oil is still hot, involves running the oil through the filtration machine while the deep fryer is vacuumed and then cleaned with a non-toxic, alcohol and water-based solution.
“We then put the purified oil back and you’re ready to go,” Groglio said, adding that the cleaning, which costs about $30 a fryer, extends the life of most oils from one week to two weeks. “We try to avoid really busy times so as to not disrupt service.”
They also offer to take the oil to a biofuel plant in Waterbury free of charge for the production of biodiesel through the Filta Bio program, said Neeley, an account executive in the wholesale banking industry.
“In most cases, our cleaning service is self-financing because it extends the life of the oil,” he said.
The franchise also carries a Filta Cool mineral-containing panel that can be installed monthly on the ceiling of refrigerators to reduce moisture, Neeley said.
“We’re still getting into that side,” he said.
The startup cost to buy a franchise from Orlando, Fla.-based Filta Environmental Kitchen Solutions, which was founded in England in 1996 before coming to the United States in 2002 and has franchisees in 20 countries, is about $125,000, including training, a van and equipment, Groglio said.
Restaurants are always looking for new methods and equipment that will help them save money, especially in today’s economy and with state laws going into effect next July concerning the storage of cooking oils, said Nicole Griffin, president of the Connecticut Restaurant Association.
“This (Filta) might help restaurants,” she said.
Owning a franchise that caters to the restaurant industry can be successful because food is franchising’s largest category, said Steve Dubin, president of the New England Franchise Association.
NRA Show in Chicago a Great Success
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 Vans Hit the Road
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.
Filta Receives Franchise Hot 100 Award
Hot on the heels of its “Best of Orlando award“ from The U.S. Commerce Association, The Filta Group was awarded 30th place in the national Franchise Hot 100 published by redhotfranchises.com.
This award recognizes the growth of individual franchisees in the Filta network as well as the strength of the business model during the trying economy of the last couple of years.
The FiltaFry, FiltaCool and FiltaBio services combine to make up the Filta Environmental Kitchen Solutions business.