When a restaurant’s identity revolves around chicken wings or flash-fried king crab legs, the restaurant has a keen interest in a well-functioning fryer. Thus players like Wingstop Restaurants, the Richardson, Texas-based chain that sold its one billionth Buffalo-style chicken wing this year, and Rockin’ Baja Lobster, the emerging outfit from San Diego that aspires to a niche in Baja, Mexico-style seafood, specify high-efficiency fryers with quick temperature recovery and built-in filtration. Such equipment promises lower energy costs and less labor, mess and risk from handling hot oil, not to mention a longer life for the more expensive transfat-free frying oils that are coming into use.
Americans certainly yearn for fried foods, even with the hubbub about healthier eating. Some 65 percent of quick-service restaurant operators polled in the National Restaurant Association 2007 Restaurant Industry Forecast reported a rise in the popularity of chicken sandwiches, many of which are fried. In addition, 42 percent saw chicken strips and nuggets gaining favor as well. A newsletter from The NPD Group, a Port Washington, N.Y.-based market research firm, reported that many fried items on menus appear simply as “crispy nuggets” or “breaded chicken sandwiches” without specifying the cooking method.
One of the most popular fried items is Buffalo-style chicken wings.
“There’s a burgeoning demand for wings in the U.S.,” said Bill Knight, chief operating officer of 310-unit Wingstop. “Our sales continue to astound us. Our [average unit volumes] are close to $700,000, and our model is 1,200 to 1,500 square feet of inline space.”
At Wingstop, fried foods—namely Buffalo wings, boneless chicken wing strips and fresh-cut fries—account for 85 percent to 90 percent of food sales, Knight said. In its new restaurants, Wingstop is specifying Pitco Solstice Supreme fryers, which Knight said are 30 percent more efficient than the ones it used previously. The typical Wingstop store has three 14-inch-wide fryers and one or two 18-inch-wide models, depending on its volume.
A fryer’s temperature recovery time, or the amount of time it takes fryer oil to return to its initial temperature after food is added, is a key factor in quality and throughput. Wingstop’s new fryers recover “a lot quicker” than the norm, Knight said. They put out significantly more BTUs per hour than the models they replaced.
Operators increasingly look for fryers with built-in filtration to eliminate the labor and hazard of manually filtering hot fryer oil. When the feature is activated, oil drains from the fry kettle into a filtering chamber inside the unit. After filtering out the particulates that degrade oil, it pumps it back into the kettle.
“If you make it easy for people, they’re more likely to do it,” said Houston Striggow, vice president of operations for Fransmart, a company that provides franchising sales and support to Rockin’ Baja Lobster. The concept’s seven Mexican-cantina-style restaurants use fryers with built-in filtration.
“It promotes a better product and longer oil life,” Striggow said.
Proper filtering is more important than ever in light of Rockin’ Baja’s switch to trans-fat-free frying oil this year. It costs about 15 percent more than the hydrogenated oil it replaced.
“If you’re going to use something that’s more expensive, the more care you’ll put into handling it so it lasts longer,” Striggow said.
At Wingstop, built-in filtering means not having to drain oil from each fryer into a portable filtration unit twice a day.
“It’s much easier and safer for the operator,” Knight said.
How often one should filter depends on what is being fried, operators said. At Rockin’ Baja, oil is filtered twice a day.
“Most of what we fry is without batter or breading,” Striggow said. “But if I had a lot more breaded items,” he said, “I would certainly want a fryer with built-in filtering, and I would be doing it more than twice a day.”