June 2013
| Business World Magazine | 227
plain, consider that the typical commercial
kitchen will feature a menu with a variety
of fried-dishes, from French fries and onion
rings to fish, chicken, shrimp and more. The
equipment used in that process, as well as the
ongoing supply of cooking oil, can be among
the areas of greatest, frequent operational
cost. The oil has to constantly be changed
because if not, the quality of the food’s taste
declines. Changing that oil can be a tricky
situation. A worker typically has to loosen a
spigot on the underside of the fryer allowing
the oil to flow from the drain. This will often
become clogged by residual pieces of food,
thereby forcing the worker to use a pole or
other implement to unclog the drain. It’s hot
and dirty work that often falls to the low-
est man on the kitchen totem pole. The oil,
once collected, is then typically transferred
into a container outside, generally near the
garbage area, where the used-oil then ef-
fectively helps attract pests in the form of
roaches and rodents. There’s not a year that
will pass without seeing some form of work-
er injury caused from processes involving
deep fryers. During that same time, restau-
rants will spend money relating to clean-up,
pest control or the paying of regulatory fines
resulting from failed sanitary processes. Filta
effectively eliminates all of these problems,
enabling restaurant and cafeteria owners to
focus more on their core services of creating
recipes and serving meals to customers.
STICKY WICKET
IN WORK OPS
Filta’s emergence into a business model and
franchising system is a story that begins with
Jason Sayers. According to Filta Vice Presi-
dent of FranchiseDevelopment AdamBlake,
back in the mid 1990s, Sayers was preparing
for a cricket match when he received disturb-
ing news that one of his teammates had been
severely injured by burns he endured during
his part-time job at a restaurant. As so often
happens with a number of workers, the man
was attempting to drain a deep-fryer. Upon
loosening some of the food that had been
clogging the drain, the hot oil spewed out
causing him to receive third-degree burns.
As Blake explains, “When Jason learned how
all this happened, he thought, ‘There has to
be a safer way to do this work.’”
So inspired, Sayers went on to create a de-
vice which essentially worked like a vacuum
to remove oil from the deep fryers. He con-
