From Hiltons to Sheratons, Ws to RIUs, Filta helps them achieve their green credentials by recycling their oil. The latest hotel to take on the service is the amazing Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. 

Filta’s President, Jason Sayers, says “We service hotels in over 20 countries throughout the world.  Dwayne (franchise owner) claims that the Atlantis is the nicest we have.  Well I know some guys from the UK, Australia, South Africa, Malaysia, and other countries where we service who will argue they have some better.  However, there’s no disputing the fact that the Atlantis is one of the great hotels in the world.”

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.

GRAND RAPIDS — When General Motors shut down its 36th Street stamping plant last year, maintenance supervisor Mark Ruhland figured it was time to be his own boss.

“I heard about (GM) jobs in Flint, but I loved Grand Rapids, and I started looking at what I could do,” said Ruhland, 49. “There’s a thousand restaurants in Grand Rapids, so I looked at what they had to service these restaurants.”

A year later, he has a circuit of area restaurants where he purifies cooking oil to double its useful life.

Although he deals with 350-degree fryer oil and works a five-and-a-half day week, with almost no holidays, he would “never, never, never” look back.

“What I like about this is: I know exactly what I have — it’s my business,” he said.

Ruhland is part of a national trend — men middle-aged and older who have lost their jobs in the Great Recession. Looking for the next chapter of their working life, they decide they want to go on their own.

About 80 percent of jobs lost nationwide in recent years were held by men. The reason is simple: manufacturing, construction and other male-dominated industries were the hardest hit.

Some chose to go back to school. Others sent out stacks of resumes for so-so jobs paying less than their previous job with fewer benefits.

No wonder, then, more people cut off in mid-career are choosing to go into business for themselves. At least the long hours and low pay are their call.

That’s what the Sloan Center on Aging and Work at Boston College found. Workers 50 and older are more likely than younger workers to be independent, self-employed workers, and 23 percent of mature workers laid off in the past year are considering their own business.

In Michigan, with the nation’s highest jobless rate, the number of people taking the entrepreneurial plunge is surging.

“Last year, we saw a huge jump” in start-ups, said Dante Villarreal, Region 7 director of the Small Business and Technology Development Corp. based in Grand Rapids.

One in three participants who take the agency’s Fast Track small business training end up launching a company, he said.

In Grand Rapids, Ruhland also is focused on the future — and growth.

His Filta franchise is a one-man operation, but he’s expanding into Lansing this spring, aiming eventually to employ three vans and workers.

Ruhland clearly believes in the technology and environmental benefit he brings to Van Andel Arena, Fifth Third Ballpark, McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon, Brann’s steakhouses and other busy fry sites in the Grand Rapids area.

“Everybody loves you. They like you because they don’t have to do the nastiest job in the kitchen.”

The Filta Group is pleased to announce the addition of FiltaBio to its line of services unique to the franchise world and commercial kitchen management. The green service, known as FiltaBio, offers a one-of-a-kind solution for dealing with waste cooking oil issues common with almost every restaurant and commercial kitchen in America… it takes the waste oil from the fryers directly off-site, eliminating the need for waste oil storage bins at the premises.

Filta’s new solution also offers a clean, safe, environmentally responsible way for restaurant and commercial kitchen owners to make sure their cooking oil ends up in the tanks of clean, eco friendly, diesel engine vehicles and not in landfills.

The need to dispose of used cooking oil can pose major problems for small restaurants and large chains alike. The risk of dealing with used cooking oil for recycling can cause a commercial kitchen or restaurant to deal with a host of problems ranging from lack of storage space, to vermin issues from cooking oil laying around, to increased insurance liabilities from the removal process.

On top of these issues, used cooking oil can have a significant impact on the environment depending on how it is processed after removal. Virtually 100% of the oil collected by FiltaBio will end up in the diesel tanks of vehicles as clean fuel. In fact, many of the vans Filta uses are fueled on the very cooking oil they travel to filter.

“I tell all my customers that my waste cooking oil goes to make biodiesel. They love the fact that we help the environment,” said Phil Coppen, owner of The Cricketer’s Pub in Orlando, FL. “In fact, recently a company exhibiting at a waste recycling show held a dinner at our restaurant because of it.”

The goal of FiltaBio is to finally give restaurants a safe, controlled, insured, and reliable way to improve operational efficiency and reduce impact on the environment. The people at Filta know that everyone would do their part to help the environment if it made sense for their business’s bottom line as well. Environmental responsibility can be tough when businesses are already fighting to stay alive. That is why FiltaBio makes sense. The service is the perfect complement to Filta’s other offering FiltaFry.

When FiltaFry and FiltaBio are combined, waste cooking oil never needs to be stored prior to disposal. Filta Technicians are able to take used oil directly from a commercial kitchen’s fryers to completely eliminate both the risk of emptying oil from fryers by inexperienced staff, and the cumbersome burden of storing used cooking oil while awaiting pickup. The ability to remove oil storage all together also eliminates the increased risk of vermin infestation due to improper storage techniques. This is a particularly attractive benefit to restaurants in urban areas where limited space for storage may cause some businesses to break municipal codes and dispose of cooking oil improperly.

“We have the unique ability to take the oil off-site directly from the fryers, eliminating the need for the unsightly and unhealthy waste oil bins out back. Wherever we offer the FiltaBio service, customers take the service for this fact alone. Overall, we hope that FiltaBio will be the cause of a significant increase in the amount of cooking oil that gets recycled into usable diesel fuel. FiltaBio just makes sense,” says Filta Group President Jason Sayers, “It fits perfectly into our core mission to provide commercial kitchen solutions that reduce liability, cost, and environmental impact. A result we are proud to be a part of in this current economic environment.”

FiltaBio was a natural evolution for the Filta Group. The company has been dealing with cooking oil for over 15 years since it first came on the scene. The company’s most popular service, FiltaFry, offers micro filtration for cooking oil coupled with a thorough fryer management system that simultaneously reduces the liability of grease induced burns and increases the useful life of cooking oil. Many well known customers such as Chick-fil-a, Ruby Tuesdays, and hotel brands like DoubleTree and Starwood hotels, already outsource their fryer management on some sites to Filta through the FiltaFry program. The addition of the FiltaBio disposal and recycling system will allow kitchen managers across the country to outsource yet another traditional burden of running a restaurant or commercial kitchen. ]]> http://filtafryfranchise.info/filta-news/filta-launches-oil-recycling-service/feed 0 http://filtafryfranchise.info/filta-franchise/filta-receives-franchise-hot-100-award http://filtafryfranchise.info/filta-franchise/filta-receives-franchise-hot-100-award#comments Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:58:32 +0000 Kevin Boswell http://filtafryfranchise.info/?p=935 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.

Filta Group is pleased to announce that it will be providing its environmental impact reduction service known as FiltaFry to two of the main venues of the 2010 Winter Olympics in the Vancouver area.

BC Place, the location of the Opening ceremonies, as well as GM Place will both be employing Filta’s micro-cooking oil filtration service known as FiltaFry. FiltaFry’s service focuses on purification and reduction of wasted cooking oil in commercial fryers. It allows venues such as BC Place and GM Place to drastically reduce their environmental impact due to disposal of used fryer oil while simultaneously improving the food quality in the venues.

Steven Hughes, the owner of the Vancouver FiltaFry franchise estimates that “FiltaFry will filter over 300,000 gallons of cooking oil during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics between the two venues. That is enough cooking oil to fill roughly half an olympic swimming pool.”

Mr. Hughes also provides the green service for GM Place and the Vancouver Canucks during the NHL season. When interviewed, Mr. Hughes was honored that he was able to do his part in making the 2010 Winter Olympics as environmentally responsible as possible. Mr. Hughes is not the only FiltaFry franchisee to reside on non-American soil. Come February 12th, Filta Group will have franchisee representatives in 27 countries rooting for their prospective national hero’s in their race for the Gold.

Filta’s success in 2009 leading up the Vancouver games has caused the unique company attract an ever increasing client roster of high profile venues like those of the Olympic Games, Mile High Stadium, and a list of other professional sports venues. Filta Group is poised to expand on its success in 2009 By offering even more eco-friendly services in 2010. With its soft launch of FiltaCool already a success, it aims on expanding its offerings to include FiltaBIO, and FiltaTAB. Similar to how the Olympics include a variety of sports with an overlying theme of competition and sportsmanship, Filta’s entire line of services all aim to achieve the same core accomplishments. Filta aims to help companies reduce their environmental impact while helping them become more efficient and profitable.

A new marketing campaign to restaurants is being launched in Q1 2010.  The slogan “Want to see our Weapon of Mass Reduction” is being used for both direct mail and email.

Victor Clewes, Filta CEO

The U.S. Commerce Association has honored FiltaFry creator Filta Group Inc. with the designation of the 2009 Best of Orlando Award in the green services category.

Washington, DC (PRWEB) January 18, 2010 – The Filta Group Inc., The creators of FiltaFry Mobile Oil Filtration and other green services has been selected for the 2009 Best of Orlando Award in the Green Services category by the U.S. Commerce Association (USCA).

Best Of Orlando 2009 Filta Group

While Filta is proud of its impact as the green movement, environmental responsibility is merely a byproduct of good business for FiltaFry.

The USCA “Best of Local Business” Award Program recognizes outstanding local businesses throughout the country. Each year, the USCA identifies companies that they believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and community.

Various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to choose the winners in each category. The 2009 USCA Award Program focused on quality, not quantity. Winners are determined based on the information gathered both internally by the USCA and data provided by third parties.

“While Filta is proud of its impact as the green movement, environmental responsibility is merely a byproduct of good business for FiltaFry,” says Filta Group CEO Victor Clewes. Filta Group was chosen for their relentless pursuit of business opportunities that promote green initiatives. The company has a long track record of providing services to business owners that allow them to run more efficient restaurants and commercial kitchens. Their original offering FiltaFry offers cooking oil recycling and fryer management. The service allows clients to eliminate the burn incidents that are common in most commercial kitchens related to filtering or disposing of waste cooking oil. It also allows them to increase the usable length of their cooking oil, and improve the taste of fried foods because of higher quality cooking oil and better understanding of the frying process. Using their highly advanced micro-filtration technology, Filta has purified enough cooking oil to fill even the largest football stadium. This recycled oil drastically reduces the need to produce, transport, and dispose of additional oil for cooking.

As of recently, Filta Group has expanded their initiative past just FiltaFry. They recently rolled out a multinational effort to introduce FiltaCool, a humidity control system for refrigeration units such as commercial refrigerators that conserves energy, prolongs air-condition equipment life, and reduces spoilage. Each of their two offerings focuses on helping restaurants and commercial kitchens control costs, liability, spoilage, and waste.

Victor Clewes remarked on the achievements saying that Filta was grateful for being recognized for its efforts. He also remarked on the expansion in the early part of 2010 of Filta’s additional green services such as waste oil pickup and recycling under the name of FiltaBio.