Welcome back to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. When I ran restaurants, one of the biggest hassles was fryer oil. We had multiple fryers and it was a hassle to fill them and filter them and Dump the used oil out in the ugly dumpster out back, and the whole thing. And then you had to keep your hoods cleaned, which was a fire hazard.

I mean, this is one of the biggest challenges in restaurant kitchens today. My guest this week, Ryan Bowlds, is from Restaurant Technologies and this is an end to end service that delivers Grease, filters, filters, and literally handles the whole challenge of your fryer oil in your kitchens.

And not only that, they have a service called auto mist which automatically keeps your hoods cleaned, which eliminates the need for third party hood cleaning. All in one system. All in one service. They’ve got 45, 000 customers across the country, and they’ve got trucks that can service you 24 7. Pretty amazing.

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You’re tuned in to the Restaurant Rockstars Podcast. Powerful ideas to rock your restaurant. Here’s your host, Roger Beaudoin.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. Glad you’re with us. And Ryan, welcome to the show. I’m glad you’re with me too. No, excited to be here. Thank you. This is fantastic. So this episode is about controlling the kitchen chaos. Now that is your tagline for a company that you work for called Restaurant Technologies.

But before we get into that, which is A really deep episode. Let’s talk about your back story and why automation and engineering really leads to your expertise in solving your clients problems.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I do have a little bit different of a background coming into the food service industry.

It really comes from the technical side. And I’m a mechanical engineer began my career at Cargill actually in soybean oil refineries. So had the opportunity to learn how how really the core product of what we offer is produced at a mass scale. And since then worked in process engineering, even some home automation, and really excited to be able to bring it.

The really the concepts of automation that I’ve seen work in manufacturing, in processing, and bring that to the food service industry where there is a lot of opportunity and a lot of need right now.

Excellent. That’s terrific. So Restaurant Technologies has been in business for a long time. When was it founded?

What’s the history of the company? Yeah, the late

1990s is really when we got our start, really, focusing first on total oil management, which is our oil delivery and management and and use cooking oil removal service, and then a little bit more recently, around 2015 for Automist, which is our hood and flue cleaning service.

Okay, we’re going to get into all that, and that’s some of the benefits of your service and your system. I ran restaurants for about 23 years, and we had lots of fryers, which means lots of fryer oil, and lots of changing of the oil, and there were burns that happened, and there were slippery floors that had to be cleaned up, and it was a real hassle for my kitchen team.

And your company eliminates all that hassle. But before we go there, I mean Do you have any crazy stories of, anything that you’ve seen or heard happen to any of your clients, or even in the restaurant business or hospitality in general, where if only they had restaurant technologies, this would have never happened.

Yeah, I think, really at the core of it, we’re eliminating some of the riskiest jobs. And so some of the stories that you do hear are oftentimes unfortunate ones that you really hope to be able to eliminate and that we really aim to eliminate when it comes to burns. As you mentioned, carrying the hot stockpacks around, spilling oil all over the parking lot as you try to carry that out to the disposal bin for the used cooking oil.

And That’s something that is there for quite some time. You have to work pretty hard to get rid of the evidence of an oil spill, make it safe again, and then obviously the burns are something that really stick with people, and really are something that they bring forward to us. They can remember. Knowing someone that was working in their restaurant that, that experienced a really tough burn and they themselves sometimes have the scars to show it.

So that’s the really exciting thing that we get to help with is eliminating that situation altogether by using automation.

Thanks for saying that. You brought to mind some funny memories of me, because again, we had that big collection bin out back near the dumpsters, and one, it was unsightly, because the used oil used to be poured down the front.

And we had a driveway that went around the building, and unfortunately, some people would drive up that side. And the last thing you want is your customers to see something negative or unsightly. But on top of that oil used to attract raccoons and skunks, and even the neighborhood dogs and its like.. you know what im saying dependent on where you live you could have a bear in your parking lot because hes trying to get to the grease and oil and the french fries that might be in the oil so tell us, if you could explain, soup to nuts, what Total Oil Management is.

It’s a remarkable service, but it’s literally start to finish, end to end. It takes care of the entire challenge of your. Cooking oil in your kitchen, but tell us what it is.

Yeah, no, really excited about Total Oil Management and I introduced it as a service, which it really is. It’s not a standalone product that we’re selling a one time and and allowing you to operate What we’re really doing is we’re using automation to provide a service that’s really unique in the marketplace.

So what we’ll do is we will install a system in the restaurant, typically indoors in the back of house, we’ll put two tanks, one fresh oil tank, one used oil tank. And we’ll connect that up to the fryers. Now the latest fryers have direct connections on the back, kind of quick connects that allow you to plug right in.

And we can also do a retrofit on older fryers where we give you a an add one. It looks like a gas pump, if you will, that allows you to add oil directly to the vat. So we’re, we come in, we do all of that installation. And on the outside of the restaurant, we put a fill box, which allows us without even entering your restaurant to be able to drop off fresh oil and simultaneously with the exact same truck, we can pull used cooking oil out.

And we eventually turn that into renewable diesel or biofuels. For use, again, in our trucks or anybody else’s trucks that that are doing similar similar services.

So that’s absolutely remarkable. So that is eliminating you purchasing oil from your standard supplier, whether it’s, Cisco or whoever that you order from now, because you’re providing the oil.

And it’s we’ve got a propane delivery, we’re on automatic delivery at our house. It’s the same thing, right? You’re on automatic delivery, you never run out, all that kind of stuff.

Absolutely. It’s there are a lot of parallels. So even in, in propane, which you referenced, they’ll have a level sensor on there that has a cellular connection that tells them when you’re full or when you’re empty.

And that allows them to get a truck there just in time. We actually do the exact same thing on our oil tanks. We have a sensor in there. We install a cellular modem within the restaurant. And that allows us to know exactly how much oil you have at any given time. So we can be there before you run out.

And so that’s, yeah, that’s the exciting way. It’s one of the exciting ways that we can use technology to really provide an even better service than we would without.

So that eliminates the need for a kitchen manager, chef, or someone who’s in charge in the kitchen of monitoring, when we need oil, when to order more oil.

And I say that because a funny story happened to me related to that propane thing again. We were on automatic delivery at the house, but we were at a seasonal restaurant business for 20 years. And one, one season when we were starting up again, I actually forgot to recall the oil company to turn, put us back on auto delivery.

And we, it’s a Saturday night, 730, all the line cooks are cooking the steaks and the fryers and all that kind of stuff. And then all of a sudden everything comes to a stop. It’s like the fire goes out and it’s nothing works. And I run out to the oil, the propane tank and it’s empty and I got a full restaurant.

What a nightmare that was. So yeah, it just reiterates. That’s the benefit of your service. Now let’s go back to the tanks inside. Are there any hidden hoses or how do you get them out of the way of trip hazards and all that kind of stuff? Because I’m envisioning, I had a back room, we actually had a sprinkler system back there and they installed big sprinkler tanks and that would have been the place that we’d put the oil tanks.

But then you’d have to cross the kitchen to get into the actual cooking line, which was actually closer to the dining room. How do you. How do you handle that?

Yeah, so in, in almost a hundred percent of the cases, we are running the lines, which essentially the hoses through the ceiling plenum.

And so we, we have the right the right type of hoses, et cetera, that allow us to do that and then do it safely. So they’ll stay out of any tripping hazards and it will make it so that from that fill box on the outside of the restaurant, we To the tanks, you really won’t have any place where you’re crossing a hose.

We have pumps that sit actually designed to the tanks are designed so that the pumps can actually sit on top of the tanks and not take up additional floor space, and then that will take the oil and push it again, through the ceiling plenum over to the fryers where you can use it at the actual actual frying area.

And perform filtration, et cetera, before the fryer can send it back to that used cooking oil tank again without having any trip points along the way. The goal is to make it as unobtrusive as possible, take up as little footprint as possible. And if that’s even still if there is a limited amount of space, we do have an outdoor tank option as well.

And actually just released that within the last 18 months, a brand new version of it. Really excited about that product, seeing a lot of demand because we are seeing smaller footprints within commercial kitchens. So they are getting smaller and smaller, more efficient. And so if you do have that need to have them outside, we can, again, put those tanks outside in an area that that is safe for those to be at.

Now we had four fryers going all the time, because my biggest restaurant did a ton of fried foods, but some restaurants perhaps maybe have more or less. Is the system sized based on your existing number of friars and that allows for expansion in case suddenly you add another friar or another friar and you grow that part of the business?

Tell us about that.

Yeah, it absolutely is scalable to your usage and going back to that concept of using technology to allow that scalability because we’re monitoring the oil. Really the only difference if you’re, if you start using more or less oil is that we can vary the frequency at which we’re sending our trucks out to either replenish the oil or remove the used cooking oil.

And so that’s that’s really where the ability to scale comes in. We can hook up to a number of fryers, multiple fryers at one time. Or provide that add on for older versions of Friars that allow you to reach each of the VATs within the bank of Friars. And as your business evolves, we can certainly evolve with that and be able to match that usage.

Let’s ask a question. Let’s just say a restaurant is open, say, lunch and dinner. They’ve got a busy business. Do you arrange the deliveries and the, maybe the pickups of the used oil doesn’t matter, but delivering new oil and refilling those fryers has to be coordinated when the restaurant’s actually not open for business?

Would I be correct in saying that? How does that work?

Yeah, we can actually stop by 24 hours a day and continue to stay out of the way. Even with a quick service restaurant, for instance, that has a drive thru we can place our trucks nearby to that fill box, but we can run a length of crush proof or even kind of car proof hosing across the drive and be able to make sure that there’s no obstruction to, to cars as they go through the parking lot or through a drive through and we can still deliver that oil and remove.

The waste oil. Flexibility is there and you actually don’t have to. Be present for that delivery or for that pickup because we’re handling it. We’re the trucks are actually able to monitor the level in the tanks as they fill it with oil. So we’re taking care of all of that. And it’s invisible really to the restaurant as we fill and remove.

Very good, excellent. Here’s a two fold question for you. It reaches out about supply and demand and the cost of fryer oil. Over the years, I remember when I was in the business, that seemed to fluctuate, and sometimes pretty wildly when we’d have to buy, those big fryers.

boxes of oil and that sort of thing. So that’s the first thing. In terms of economies of scale, based on, I think you’ve got something like 45, 000 hospitality accounts across the country, so you obviously are moving a lot of oil. Does that improve the price to the end consumer? And how does it compare, say, to buying just those boxes of oil, even though you’re adding in an extra service to it?

I’m just curious about that.

 As we’re looking at the marketplace, we actually look on a monthly basis and our pricing is really based off of the commodity market. So what is it trading at during the course of that month? And then we will simply, as we talk about the pricing model for that restaurant or for that chain we will be able to place a.

Adder on top of that commodity market price that represents the cost to deliver, the cost to remove the oil, our fleet of trucks, et cetera. And so what that means is that you are always getting the best possible pricing on a monthly basis. A lot of times within contracts, that’s every six months or every 12 months where they’ll look at it and readjust.

But on a monthly basis, we’re looking at the oil markets and changing the pricing to reflect that. So that you’re always current. And with that you also, because of the, like you mentioned, 45, 000 restaurants, we do hundreds of millions of pounds of oil per year is what we deliver and then also recycle.

And so by the fact of that volume, also in addition to the fact that there’s much less packaging, which is a cost, it’s an additional cost, those jib boxes the actual plastic as well. That’s something that you’re paying for if you’re buying a jib. And so we’re typically able to be very price competitive with that actual, just basic jib pricing.

If not be even a cost savings and we see several hundred dollars of cost savings per month for many customers. As they look at, hey, you’ve got the cost of oil. I’m getting a bigger portion of the used cooking oil back. And I know that they’re measuring that and metering that. So I’m getting the right amount of credit for the used cooking oil that I’m providing.

And then any insurance benefits, as you mentioned early on, are really a benefit all on top of that to reduce your risk from a safety standpoint, from a building standpoint. It’s it’s exciting because you’re transforming that model completely, going to a bulk model, we can leverage our buying power, but then also you’re reducing the waste that you’re paying for anyway.

I think I heard you say credits. Now that’s very interesting to me because going back to owning restaurants, I had a company that would remove my oil from those very messy dumpsters. They wouldn’t pay me for it, they would just take it away for free because obviously they made they’re recycling and all that sort of stuff.

But I was glad just to get rid of it because it was one last thing I had to deal with. Is there some sort of a credit or a price advantage? Because you’re now taking that oil and you’re making obviously money from the recycling end of it,

Yeah. The used cooking oil has become quite valuable on the market.

And that’s because it can be used for a biofuels. And so there’s demand for a lower carbon intensity fuel source. And that’s really what’s driving some of that. So what we do is is we oftentimes will share that with the customer and we’ll look at the. current price on the market. And again, we’re adjusting that, constantly, but we’ll agree on a split, if it’s 25 percent of it, or if it, the customer keeps the first 15 cents of the value of oil, and then we split the next, or there’s a lot of different ways to look at that, but we’ll agree to that as we look at each business type.

And then from there on we’ll actually use high precision flow meters when we’re pulling it. And so we can tell you exactly how much we pulled out. And you can have confidence that you’re getting credit for everything that, that not only you consumed on the fresh side, but then also contributed back for renewable fuels or biofuels.

Keeps getting

better. Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome. Here’s a question that I’m sure my audience wants to know, myself included. How does the product extend the life? Because one of the things that is a challenge with the traditional method of filling the thing and filtering the thing and getting rid of the old oil and then refilling the thing, which was a huge hassle, is when to do it.

When does the food quality start to suffer? When does the oil get really brown and the foods are not golden brown anymore and you can taste that grease? And your product, I believe, extends the life or makes it as efficient a process as possible. Can you explain that from your technical side?

Yeah, that’s one of the, that’s another one of those big advantages.

So as we talk about the total benefit of using the system, it’s not uncommon for our customers to see 10, 15, 20 plus percent. Total oil usage savings on a weekly or monthly basis. And that’s because of a couple of things. Awesome. We, that’s awesome. We do provide all of the necessary tools to be able to monitor it.

So I do have a color test kit that we’ll provide of, no additional charge so that you can. Actually see the color variation and the state of the oil and whether it needs to be filtered or not. And then if you want to go another step, we actually have sensors that we can install into the fryers that can monitor whether or not you are filtering enough.

And so we’ll set a standard operating procedure and say, Hey, we want to know that filter is running at least five minutes per shift. And then we’ll track that on our online portal and you’ll be able to see, did we indeed do that? Am I filtering enough per my procedures to be able to do that? And then the last thing is if it’s a fryer that does not have a built in filtration system many modern fryers do, but if it’s a fryer that does not have that, We will provide a roll up filter for use with the system.

And so again, providing the tools to be able to do it. And then just the fact that when things are easier to be able to keep up with when you have pumps doing all the work, when you have a built in plumbing system of hoses that are taking the oil to the fryer and away, all of a sudden the burden of filtration becomes much less.

And so you’re more likely To get adherence to it, for people to do it and really see the value in it. That’s really where we see a lot of the benefits for customers, making it a lot easier and giving them all the right tools to be able to do it.

I think, thank you. I think all of us to some extent are very environmentally conscious and there’s been such a movement, in the past decade about saving the planet and certainly you’re doing your part.

Your share there. My former chef in one of my restaurants had a biofuel car and he was really all about that, which was awesome. And he used to take some of our oil and somehow make it work in his Mercedes sedan. Are there, what are some of the other uses besides biofuels for vehicles for used cooking oil?

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So there are a couple of different options. You can use cooking oil. Sometimes it will go into animal feed. So again, it is a food grade product. And so that is a place where it will be used at times. Cosmetics are another area where vegetable oils are used or I’d say oils in general are used.

And so you can certainly do that. There’s some pretty interesting uses of it. You can even turn it into industrial lubricants, things like that. So a lot of uses for used cooking oil, but just based on the, the the amount of capacity that the domestic market has a lot of it does go into biofuels.

There’s something to all of this because restaurants, independents are always looking for efficiencies to compete against the chains that have the leverage and the economies of scale. And every little bit helps. And the bottom line is important because margins are shrinking. So I think we’ve got the audience’s attention, but there’s something to the fact that of those 45, 000 customers, you count some of the biggest chains in the world, like McDonald’s and Burger King and Applebee’s, and it’s like, they know something, they’re getting a benefit out of the service.

Why wouldn’t why wouldn’t a small independent or someone that owns several smaller locations be interested? So it’s really impressive and not a huge amount of time. You must have some pretty amazing marketing people or the product sells itself or a combination of both those things.

It’s I think we’re really honored to serve the customers that, that we have today and really excited to continue to I really bring awareness of this solution to the marketplace. The vast majority of customers are still using the status quo. They’re using that, that bin in the back of of the restaurants.

And that’s really what’s being used most widely today. And so we have expanded and been able to provide this to, tens of thousands of customers. But so much more more than we can do for so many people out there. And as you mentioned, you have the big chains. They’re thinking about it from a efficiency standpoint, from a risk mitigation standpoint, a safety standpoint.

That’s absolutely a huge thing, but the cost benefits are real too. And that’s why all of those things together and knowing that it really is on a per restaurant basis that we can prove that out. Of about a third of our customers are independent operators. It’s not all the, the large institutions the large chains the large facilities are using huge amounts of oil.

It really is across the, across the industry from a commercial kitchen standpoint, if you’re frying we really are confident that you can see benefits from our system.

Thanks for sharing, because a large extent of our audience are the small independent operator, the backbone of our industry and it’s great that you serve so many of them as well.

Another question comes to mind, and I’ve always wondered how this works, because I was always, my locations were always in residential areas, and I own the real estate, and I, Had room for dumpsters and even that ugly fryer oil dumpster. But when you’re in the middle of a metropolitan city and you’re in some brick building and there’s literally no parking and you’re on the street, it’s I always wondered, where are the dumpsters for the trash and the cardboard?

And where’s the dumpster for the fryer oil? If you’re thinking of leasing a space and there’s no space for that stuff, one more reason why your product is a huge benefit. Absolutely. Yep. Now you’ve got 41 different, you call them depots, right? And these are your sort of HQs, your headquarters where the trucks are and all that sort of thing.

And then you literally service every state from those. And some have their own within the state. Some are multiple states and you cover regions and it’s, there’s logistics behind all of this, right? It’s all computer controlled and making sure that you can take care of those 45, 000 customers and not miss a beat.

Yeah,

we we absolutely do have very strong relationships with our suppliers on the oil side and on the fleet side and really proud of the team we have as well. So our delivery personnel, our technicians that service the systems, because we also do maintain the systems as well. That’s of no cost to the customer.

So while it’s installed we will handle anything. If there’s A problem with the pump, if there is something that needs to be addressed, we’ll come out and do that free of charge. So it takes a whole team and we want to be able to do that consistently and on a national level. And so having 41 depots allows us to really serve.

Not only that local market, we’re typically about 200 miles of radius of from our depots is how, is where we serve. And that allows us to serve greater than 90 percent of the total the total metro areas in the U S and really 90 percent of the population as well. So you look at how we’re set up to cover customers.

It means that we can serve, Really a one off restaurant all the way to a national chain. And they can know that, Hey, they’re going to have that consistency. It’s one supplier that’s that’s really able to support them from all of those areas. And each depot really is, it’s It’s really a miniature tank farm.

Inside of them we have tanks of the different oil types that we sell and we have the fleet of trucks that are home to each of those depots, the technicians and the leadership team that’s very actively involved with customers as well. I think that’s one of our strengths and one of the important things that we do stress is that our operations team is a partner of the customers and so they are visible and present.

You handle different types of oil, I think you just mentioned. Are there, can you explain what these types, because I guess in my own experience it was just, we ordered the box and that was just the oil, and that’s all I really knew about it. Are there different grades or viscosities or whatever for sizes of fryers or what the purpose of the unit is?

Explain that, I had no idea.

Yeah, and we’re actually fortunate enough to have an oil expert, Ron Cardwell in our company, on our team who’s really been involved with the science of oil for his entire career and so although he could talk to it much better, I will certainly can step through with my my level of knowledge on the different oil types.

We offer, I would say typical is about five different oil types within each of our depots and that can vary depending on the location, but clear soy is an oil type that’s the very basic soy oil that you would think of it, think about soybean oil. Okay, sure. Yeah, soybean oil.

That’s that’s the most basic form. And then we have a creamy soy, which we actually have our own blend called RTI Gold. And what that does is it does have some solid fractions that we mix in there that makes the oil more robust. It makes it last longer and have better characteristics.

That is, that’s another option that we have at many of our depots. And then canola oil has certainly gained popularity over time as well. So that’s a pretty common oil for us to have. And then any of the remaining types of vegetable oil are really spec oils. There’ll be a blend, a custom blend that a customer has requested.

And depending on the size of that of the demand for that we’re happy to accommodate adding additional tanks adding the infrastructure to be able to support that oil. So that’s the breakdown of different oils. And one that we’re really excited about that we actually just announced a partnership with is liquid tallow is a new really a new option from a bulk standpoint that we have began rolling out in select markets.

And It’s a tallow product similar to the solid cubes of beef tallow, but it does go through additional steps using pressure and temperature to be able to really remove the, some of the solids and make it liquid at room temperature. So all of a sudden now we have a beef tallow product. That is liquid at room temperature.

And we can provide in bulk just like we do with vegetable oils. And so we’re starting to see some really strong demand for that and select markets. And we look to continue to roll that out on a nationwide basis.

That’s a real education on oil that I wasn’t aware of. And all those different products obviously add certain flavor and nuances to the food.

And if you’re really into that sort of thing, you can enhance the quality and the flavor of what you’re offering your customers. your guests just by virtue of the oil you select.

Absolutely. And we’re happy to help with that. As I mentioned with our our on team experts we’re happy to walk through a little bit more of the science and the the benefits of each type is it’s really honing it in to, to what you’re looking for from a flavor profile, from a color profile, all of those things.

So in my restaurants most of them. We had two giant hoods, and, they were big. I had the fryer line, and the grill, the charbroiler line, and all this kind of stuff under one main hood, and then on the backside of that wall, in the prep kitchen, I had big stoves where people were cooking stuff, and both of those had to be cleaned twice a year.

And you always had to put it on your calendar, remember to have it cleaned, and there was a lot of grease build up. And I remember at any given time, you look up there and you see a lot of grease in one spark, and the next thing you know, what a safety hazard. I was always afraid of fire, so I stayed on top of that.

But I remember the guys would come in, and it would be after close of service, of course, And they’d have these big, these big hoses and they’d have to mask everything off with big sheets of plastic and all this kind of stuff and protect our stuff without messing it. And I guess it’s high pressure, hot water.

I don’t know. I’ve never really watched it, but they’d be there for a good amount of time during the night. And then those fans would have to run for 24 hours to finish the process. Yes. And I guess I’m wondering if you’ve got a quick serve place or even a full serve restaurant, you’re open breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

It’s there’s another challenge. And you’ve got a service called AutoMist that automates the whole thing and eliminates the need for third party hood cleaning. So tell us about AutoMist.

Autumnist is a really exciting product that we’ve seen seen really strong interest from the marketplace on, and it’s a relatively young product line, as I mentioned, the initial stage of it in 2015 really got started in earnest more in the 2019 time frame, and Pretty new to the marketplace in relative terms, but one that’s making a big impact.

And what we’ll do is we will come in and we don’t, we, you don’t have to buy a new hood. You don’t have to re, retrofit your hood, your flu system or your fan in many cases. And we’ll do a survey. We’ll take a look. We’ll say, okay here’s the measurements of the hood and flue system. Here is how far of a run that we’re going to need to make from the hood all the way to the ceiling, to the roof of the of the building.

And we will actually design a custom system of nozzles and tubing that we will install inside the hood and flue system. And this connects into a control box, which we place onto the wall. And it has a it’s a, It actually has a digital scale that we connect again to our cellular modems that have a detergent bottle on them.

And so what we do is we take that control box, it pulls in water and it pulls in detergent, mixes it together, and then sprays it and mists it through the nozzles into the hood and flue system. And consistently and constantly, is removing very small amounts of grease on a daily, if not more frequent basis, so that you’re in a constant state of clean.

So really reduces that risk of fire. As you look at, yeah, that grease building up and having some type of event. And the other thing is that because we’re constantly cleaning it, when we come by for our quarterly inspections, which we provide as part of this part of the system you’re not having to shut down for hours and hours on end.

It is not that same level of mess that that you’re thinking of from seeing the hood cleaners. Yeah. Or the amount of time that you have to have someone there supervising or drying the system out after the fact. And so we’re able to come in, provide that peace of mind on a daily basis, but then provide the reports that are quarterly inspections and really keep you up and running as much as possible.

So that’s the that’s the exciting part of Automist. That’s

tremendous. I might’ve missed this, but does it work in conjunction with an Ansel system? It doesn’t eliminate the need because there’s still a code where you have to have an Ansel system. Am I correct in that?

Yeah, so Ansel systems are going to extinguish a fire if there is one.

If there are any flames inside of the hood and flue system, they will fire. Our system is designed not to interfere with that system. And so we’re really focused on keeping the grease down within the hood and flue system. So there really isn’t any fuel for a fire. If there was one to start or if there was a source of ignition, and then the Ansel system is unaffected by ours, so if there was an event where it still would need to fire, it is absolutely going to do that for you.

So this tells me automatically that you’re reducing the risk of a fire in a restaurant. And when you go to insure your business, any business really, fire is one of the biggest risks, statistically. But especially in restaurants. Tell us about insurance benefits, because I know that’s pretty huge too.

Yeah,

absolutely. So as you’re looking, The tough part that, and I know you’ve mentioned it and it probably, seen the stories of is if the cleanliness of a hood and flu system is really unchecked and there happens to be a fire, it’s not uncommon for that to be a catastrophic fire where it consumes the entire building because there’s so much fuel in there if it’s not in a, continuous level of clean that it can really cause significant damage.

And That’s from a property value standpoint or a property insurance standpoint, that’s a huge part of it. Also, with the hood cleaners coming in or even your own personnel, if they’re helping with the process or they’re after the fact, if a cleaning wasn’t properly cleaned up afterwards, that’s you’re reducing the safety risk as well just for the employees.

You’re creating a safer environment for them and for any contractor or third party that would come into your restaurant for other services that you may be having. Some big benefits there and I love the word that you use because it’s really the way I look at it as well.

The reason that we’re very successful With getting insurance discounts is because it’s seen as statistically safer to have an automated system keeping your hood and flu in a much, much better state of clean than you could do otherwise without automation. And so that’s where we we really see, we have over a dozen insurance providers already pre approved and pre signed on.

We do have an insurance expert on our staff as well that can help guide through that process of getting those

benefits. That’s something else that’s interesting to me because I know that insurance carriers have, many of them have shied away from the hospitality business based on the statistical risk.

And it’s harder and harder to find carriers, which means you’ve got less competition that you can shop around to get a better price. And now you’ve got a network of insurance carriers that you’ve worked with that want to work with restaurants simply because of the service you provide. Is that what I just heard?

Yeah. And and The great thing is it is actually for both services again. So since total management, as we talked about earlier provides a safer working environment and some of those same benefits and an automist as well, it provides a lot of benefits for property insurance, and then also the safety end you’re able to, if you have both services, you will get more of an insurance break.

So it’s not one or the other. It really is. It’s you’re reducing risk on multiple fronts. And so both of those services can help you benefit that from that.

Now your website has seen as much as, or claims that you’ve seen as much as a 20 percent savings in insurance, but the average is about 10 to 15, which is still very significant.

And that’s a cross section of your clients. So another great thing. Everyone wants to save money, but it is, it’s about the safety. It’s about the hassle. It’s about the cost savings. It’s about for, set it and forget it pretty much. And you can’t have too much of that today.

Yeah, it’s depending on the insurance that you’re currently carrying it’s not uncommon for thousands of dollars per year to be able to be saved just from the insurance aspect as well.

And it’s it’s not a scary process either. As I mentioned, we do have on staff. experts that can help guide that through the process. And since we’ve already talked with a lot of the carriers ahead of time, those conversations are not as as onerous as you may think.

Your company has also been named one of the greatest places to work by Newsweek magazine.

So that says a lot. And you look like you’re a happy guy. You like working there. They take good care of you, don’t they?

Absolutely. I think, yeah, I think this this industry is, really a fun industry to be a part of. And it’s something that you’re interacting with every day in your everyday life. People are brought together by food.

Everyone you talk to has a example that they could bring to mind of the restaurant industry. And I think that that’s really exciting to be a part of. And then combine that with a company that’s really thinking outside the box. We’re looking at not just providing a service. We could. We could deliver the oil to you, in a very manual way, for instance, that could be the service or on the hood cleaning side that already is a manual service that’s out there, but we’re leveraging automation to really provide a unique solution that’s also very cost effective.

So you’re taking that burden off. You’re putting yourself in control. Because you’re using automated solutions. And so that’s what we love about what we get to do here.

Any new products or services on the horizon that you’re going to be rolling out? Maybe that’s a secret now, or maybe it’s close to being launched.

No, there are a couple of things that we’re really excited about. It’s part of a continuing progression of what we’re really proud of today. But our, I mentioned that we provide all the tools to enable you to reduce your oil usage and really have have more control over the filtration process.

And we actually will be rolling out In the first half of next year, a brand new filter box. And so that’ll be really best in class. We’ve done a lot of competitive benchmarking. We’ve done extensive field trials. We have about 25 units that are already out there with customers. They’re giving us all kinds of feedback in the design process so that we can roll out the best possible product that, that we can, and we’re really excited about that new filter box coming out.

I mentioned the new outdoor tanks. It’s a really nice design, very slick. It’s a. It’s a very sightly, and I would say there, honestly, it’s a good addition to the outside of your restaurant. It’s something that it’s not going to be an eyesore, incredibly functional, allows us to service the equipment without coming in.

So really excited about about those two things on the oil side. And then on Automist, I think the big thing that we’re continuing to drive for is we’re really looking to continue to increase the level of connectivity. We want to be able to monitor what’s going on with the system, how much detergent that’s being used, all of those things so that we can have proactive approaches to any service that might come up.

If we’re seeing that Hey, the flow rate is down of the, of the mist that’s coming out those nozzles. We want to be able to get there and to diagnose the issue and make it seamless and invisible for you. That’s that’s really the progression, the continuing progression that we’re working on with AutoMist.

This is all fantastic. And again, I know I mentioned to this off the record and off the camera, but this is definitely something that I would have been interested in if I still owned restaurants today. I wish I had the service because we went through all those hassles and automation is clearly where it’s at.

Make it simple, keep it simple, and keep it safe for your team. And morale goes up and everybody’s happy, absolutely. Excellent. Terrific. Your website is rti inc. com, because the company is Restaurant Technologies Inc. Ryan, thanks for being a great guest on the podcast. Yeah, really appreciate having me.

Thank you. Again, that was the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. Thanks so much to our audience for tuning in. Thank you for Ryan being a great guest. Thanks to our sponsors this week, and we can’t wait to see you in the next episode. So stay well and stay tuned. We’ll see you then.

My restaurant sold tons of fried foods, but what a hassle dealing with the fryer oil and cleaning hoods from all that grease. Restaurant Technologies handles everything end to end. They deliver, filter, monitor, collect, and recycle your waste cooking oil. Their AutoMist system reduces the fire risk with automated hood and flue cleaning, hassle free.

As 10-15 percent on insurance premiums and even get bonuses for new customer referrals. Go to rti-inc.Com or call 866-399-3639 to get started.

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Restaurant Equippers is a family owned business just like yours. Give them a call for all your equipment and supply needs or visit them at equippers. com.

Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Rockstars podcast. For lots of great resources, head over to restaurantrockstars. com. See

you next time.