A chain reaction

 Burger chain Archie’s is savings thousands of pounds a year in oil by installing OiLChef devices in its fryers

Creating world famous shakes, waffles and burgers, the Archie’s business of star studded pink venues attributes its success to its vibrant décor, extravagant menu and celebrity hot spot status, and equally, the quality of the food. Founded in Manchester over 14 years ago, the Archie’s business has gone from strength to strength and the Trafford Palazzo store is its 10^th store across the Northwest and Midlands. 

Nuno Lopes is the operations director for Archies, and he has overseen the launch of the new Trafford Palazzo opening. “This is the second Archie’s store in the Trafford Centre, in the new Trafford Palazzo which is a leisure focused complex and is a perfect location for our business.  At Archie’s we want to serve the best burgers, shakes and waffles in the country so everything we do is focused on our food quality.”

Each Archie’s store has between five and seven fryers in the kitchen area and each fryer holds around 30 litres of oil.  As a business the consumption of oil is substantial and in the chicken fryers, the oil has historically been changed daily.

With the business using a lot of oil, it is always on the lookout for innovation to drive improvements. Visiting an exhibition in London, Nuno came across the OiLChef stand and saw the claims being made.  

 “To be honest, I was sceptical of the claims,” he says. “Could this device really improve our food quality and save money on oil usage?  I had a chat with Sean, OiLChef CEO and he suggested we do a trial. So, for one month we compared a fryer with OilChef versus one without the device and we monitored food quality and oil condition.  After that trial, we couldn’t believe it.  Food quality was excellent, and we reduced oil consumption by around 50%.  We could cook at lower temperatures (around 10 degrees lower) and we reduced our cooking times by a couple of minutes per item.”

Following the trial, Archie’s rolled out the OiLChef devices to its stores and it now has around fifty across the entire business. 

As Nuno concludes: “We used to change the oil in our chicken fryers every day, now it’s twice a week and that’s a massive saving in oil, and saves us thousands of pounds a year; so, yeah, I’m really glad I went to that exhibition and met Sean!”
OiLChef https://oilchef.com