Tech Helps Delis at Ahold Delhaize, Fry’s

Ahold Delhaize and Fry’s Food Stores are adopting back-of-house oil management technology to help revolutionize their deli operations.

"Now more than ever, having a deli operation that functions as efficiently as any commercial restaurant kitchen is critical," said Jim English, director of national accounts at Minneapolis-based Restaurant Technologies. "Automating your deli's oil management can help keep employees safe, provide efficiencies in the kitchen, and help ensure you're serving a high-quality fried food product."

The Food Marketing Institute's U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2017 report found that 67 percent of households with children and 44 percent of households without children outsource cooking to the grocery store at least some of the time. This trend is expected to continue, imparting even more pressure across grocery deli operators to provide high-quality food options to consumers. 

Ahold Delhaize

Previously, Ahold Delhaize's employees were manually changing cooking oil and disposing of it in a rendering tank outside of the store, with no visibility tools to assist in managing their oil and filtration activity. This process resulted in inefficiencies in labor productivity and oil usage, safety issues, and inconsistencies with standard operating procedures from market to market.

After testing the Total Oil Management system in 16 of its stores, Ahold Delhaize has signed on to install the system in a total of 347 stores in the Eastern United States. The rollout is underway and will be completed in 2018.

"Automating our manual oil management process will help eliminate inefficiencies in labor and oil usage," said Dan Laviola, category manager, Ahold Delhaize. "Additionally, this technology will simplify our operations, help us improve food quality and, most importantly, provide a safer working environment for our employees."

Fry's Food Stores

Fry's, the Arizona-based banner of The Kroger Co., was previously disposing of its used cooking oil at such a high frequency that it resulted in an increased likelihood of unsafe working conditions and wasted oil usage. After testing the Restaurant Technologies system, it’s now installed in 117 Fry's stores in Arizona.

Restaurant Technologies provides cooking-oil management and back-of-house exhaust cleaning solutions to more than 25,000 national quick-service and full-service restaurant chains, independent restaurants, grocery delis, hotels, casinos, universities and hospitals.