A (2:58)

To learn more about Marquis, go to marquis.com, m A R Q I-I.com to learn more about this and all of the incredible features they have. So my guest on today's show is a guy named Ron Cardwell. His official title is director of Commodity Strategy at rti. But the way he introduces himself at parties is self proclaimed oil nerd. Ron, welcome to the show.

B (3:24)

Thank you very much. It's a very fair assessment. I think that gets me out of a lot of conversations at cocktail parties.

A (3:29)

Sometimes too, you don't need someone to swoop in and pull you out of the conversation. You know how to drop it dead real quickly.

B (3:37)

That's it. That's my exit.

A (3:38)

I love it. All right, so as a quick overview for the listeners here, what is rti? What does RTI do? And then I want you to talk a little bit about your background because you really are a self proclaimed oil nerd. And I think that'll help, that'll help the audience understand sort of who you are and how you come at this.

B (3:57)

Sure thing. So first of all, rti, we're, we're really just a handler of your cooking oil needs. Right. What we do is we put systems into restaurants that eliminates your worry about handling cooking oil from your fryer to disposal of the used cooking oil and helping you manage using it to the best of your ability and the safest way and get the most usage and the best food out of that oil. So we help you with that entire process. That's most simple way of putting in it. Really what we do is we give you what you need without you even having to do anything. And that's kind of our motto is we, we take the chaos out of the kitchen. Give you one less thing to worry about.

A (4:35)

Yeah. And it's a big thing that you don't have to worry about any longer.

C (4:38)

It's huge.

B (4:38)

It really is huge. It really is. Yeah.

A (4:41)

So, okay, you're not going to, you're not going to wiggle off the, off the hook yet. So talk a little bit about your background because I think your background, because a lot of people are like, oh, did you come up through restaurants or not? And you came at it from the agriculture side. So really talk about your background for a second.

B (4:55)

Yeah, of course. Right out of college, I worked for a large agricultural processing company. So essentially where all these cooking oils come from, I worked for a company that did that. I did that for 23 years. And it was all in the vegetable oil space. Talking about everything from soybean oil and corn oil and canola oil and, and all those, all those vegetable oils that you, you get we did in multiple huge quantities. Right. So I worked with the food processing industry right down to the restaurant industry. That's for the first half of my career. Second half, I really took that oil usage or knowledge, I should say, and moved into the renewable fuel sector. So how are those vegetable oils used to make renewable fuels? Right. So it's really been a full spectrum of what can we do with vegetable oil? That's been my career and that's kind of how I've turned into this self proclaimed oil nerd. As I, I love it.

A (5:42)

It's just been a great, amazing. It's amazing. And I always talk about, I say, you know, I think 80, 90% of the people who are in this industry, let's say food service, really took the side door, the back door. I have been doing this for 25 years. I definitely took the side door into this industry. I'd call, I'd call your entry into it a side door for sure, but interesting for sure. So talk to me about cooking oils. Talk to me about. Because most restaurants, most restaurants use them. So what are they using? What should they be using? Like, you're the guru, you're the guy. Kick it off.

B (6:15)

Yeah, I think so. I think the cooking oil side is probably sometimes the least sexy side of a restaurant business. Right. I mean, it's messy. You have to handle this hot oil. You put food in and food out and you're all constantly changing it. Nobody likes to think about it, but it is the one thing that translates flavor to your customers more than anything else. I mean, if it's wrong, everything will be wrong. Right. So what restaurants are doing is they're trying to find the right oil to cook their food in, which is always a combination of what food are they cooking, how do they cook it, how do they want to present it to their customers?

C (6:48)

Right.

B (6:48)

So the Most widely used oils, at least in the US are soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil. Those are the ones that are probably the most used in restaurant applications. But there's a, there's a thousand different blends of those oils that go into it too. All comes down to what you want again in the flavor profile, performance and cost. That's always the big number two is what does it cost and how can you get all these things? The best cost available.

A (7:15)

Okay, so talk to me about the. We were talking about this, you know, as we were prepping for this conversation, we talked about like the costs and some of the hidden costs that are sort of related to that go into, go into greater depth there.

B (7:27)

Sure. So cost number one, you just have your general commodity cost. And that's just that how much does a, a pound of oil cost you to get into your store? Right. And that's the first thing I think restaurant operators look at is they pick up the phone, they say, how much is this oil going to cost me? And they bring it in. The hidden costs are the things like, well, yeah, you could get really inexpensive oil that'll last you maybe two times through the fryer before flavors start getting off. It starts. Your smoke point happens to be really low and you'll start getting odors. And if you have to change that oil three times as fast, but it's half as expensive, you're really spending more money than you need to. Right. So getting the right oil into your fryer is critical to start out with. Secondarily, how you handle that oil is important. You need to filter it properly, you need to make sure you measure it right, have it at the right temperature so it lasts as long as possible, and you don't carry bad flavors out to your food. If you don't treat your oil correctly, even if it's the correct oil, it, it won't last as long either. So really, lifespan of your oil is the, really the secondary hidden cost that most people don't look at beyond just what does it cost to get a pound of oil? Right. And so I think that's where we try to help everyone out is looking at the full oil handling process and saying, let's find the oil that you need and let us teach you how to make it work best. And that's what I like doing.

A (8:47)

So then talk to me about that. Like talk to me about the relationship you have with operators out there. And full disclosure here, I'm a front house guy having a back of house conversation. And again, before we hit Record Ron and I were talking about it and I said, you know, before I knew what RTI did. Now I've become much more familiar over the last, I'll say, two years. This felt like a service. This felt like something reserved for a much bigger organization, for big restaurant groups, for big chains. Oh, we'll have somebody come in and handle all this. Which couldn't be further from the truth, which. That's been part of my education. And so in part of the education with my, with the restaurants I work with, with my clients, the members of the P3 mastermind, I think they falsely believe that this was something, a system of service that was unavailable to them because they just didn't have the, you know, they didn't have the footprint that larger organizations did. And so that's been part of my education. So as part of this conversation, I want everyone to understand is that like, this is a really crappy part of back of house operations, you know, maintaining this, cleaning this, disposing of this, all of that. But then the other piece, which is the part that's really exciting to me because it feeds into the product and sort of the creativity and all of that is the relationship you guys get to forge, saying, like, well, let's help you find the right product and let's build the right systems so that you get the most out of it, et cetera, et cetera. So talk to me a little bit more deeply about that.

C (10:07)

Sure.

B (10:07)

Well, of course, you touched on the first thing which we deal with every restaurant size there is. It's not, it's not about large corporate restaurants. You don't have to have 25 different locations or even go through thousands of pounds of oil every month. It's great if you do. We handle those for sure. But it can be as simple as going through maybe five jugs of oil a month. Might be. We have restaurants that use as little as that, that we can come in and help do several things. It's cost reductions, obviously that's important. We want to do it at the best cost possible. Right. We also want to help you find the right oil. And that's kind of where I come in is maybe you're using oil that isn't getting you the life you need. Maybe you want a different oil, maybe you have different nutritional concerns that you're trying to change for your menu. It could be flavor profiles. You're looking for all these things in the oil. What we'll do is we'll help you find what's right for your restaurant. And it is Not a one size fits all. Everybody has something different. Every chef has different needs, and every menu has different requirements. And so we try to work with that and say, okay, within this cost structure that you want to stay in, what's the performance that you need out of this oil? And how can we help you do that? So that's where I come in, is trying to meet those. Those several. There's three little avenues that all come together. One, one spot. We just want to find what that is. Yeah.

A (11:27)

So talk to me about the relationship then that you have with a chef. Because you come in and say, I mean, does it go into, like, does it go as deep as trying different oils and, you know, running the. The menu and the recipes with these different things and seeing what it does to the flavor profile and, like, talk to me about that.

B (11:44)

It certainly can. And in fact, we encourage that. If a restaurant is going to change to a different type of oil, we always encourage, let's do some test frying. Why don't we get you some samples, run it through your kitchen, make sure it's actually going to be what you need it to be. Right. So absolutely want to do that. Right. And I use this term a lot, and my salespeople sometimes probably, you know, roll their eyes when they hear me say it. But we are oil agnostic. Okay. So we're not going to push. We're not going to push one kind of oil on you. We don't have a brand name that we're going to push. We do have our own blend of oil, but it. If it works for you, great. If not, we work to get the oil you want. So it is not about us trying to sell an oil to you. It's really us trying to sell a solution to you. And that solution is make your oil work for you. Let us handle it. And then we get to the real, probably hidden cost side is labor cost. You don't have to have somebody handling that hot oil and disposing of it. You eliminate the safety hazard with that. You eliminate. Really, you can reduce insurance costs in your restaurants by not having that kind of hazardous handling going on there. Right. And you never have to pick up a phone and call and reorder and worry about running out, because we monitor that, too, so you never have to think about your oil handling again. So all those things involved with having the right thing for your menu all come together. And there's a reason why we keep customers forever, really, because we give them the solutions they need. We give them all the information we can Handle, try to give all the support we can. And we really just want you to kind of forget about it. If you need something, we're there, but otherwise, no worries.

A (13:22)

I love it. Talk to me. Question quickly about. We don't have to be quickly. We can take our time with this. Talk to me about the monitoring, the fact that like, you don't have to pick up the phone. Talk to me. That sounds magic.

B (13:33)

Oh, no, it's, it's, it's great. I think it's one of our best selling points. Right? So we, we put these tanks into the restaurant. It's very small footprint. So think of them the size of a water heater in your home, right. You have a couple of those are inside the restaurant. There's not space in the restaurant. We definitely have outdoor tanks we can do too, but they're sealed up tight. Clothes can't get into them. And we run lines from those, from those tanks to the fryer and then another line from the fryer back. So you essentially turn a nozzle, empty your fryer into one tank, turn another nozzle, fill it back up with fresh oil. Right. So you never handle. It's self serving all there. Well, what we do is we bring trucks by random times of the day. You may never see it. They'll come to the back of the house, they'll plug in, pull out the old stuff, deliver new stuff. You never, never shut your kitchen down. You never have to do anything. Or we can show up in the middle of the night if that's better for you anyway. But the point is you'll never see it happen. It'll just continue there. And we do that because that, we have a telemetry system on those tanks that measures how much is in the tank. And once it gets to a critical level, every restaurant's different. Some of it's a third of a tank or a half a tank. It'll send a message to our local depot. They'll put it on the schedule and they'll get oil delivered out. So it communicates with us constantly on what your oil levels are. So even if you have a very busy Memorial Day weekend, right, and you have all kinds of things going out or super bowl, you're, you're frying wings like crazy. It doesn't matter. We're not going to show up every Tuesday. We're going to show up every day. You need us. So we'll get live information from those tanks and just be able to get to you immediately.

A (15:08)

Create a safer, more efficient kitchen and better protect your Bottom line with restaurant technologies, its total oil management solution helps minimize the dangers that come with traditional oil management, such as oil burns, spills, and slip and fall accidents. The end to end automated oil management system delivers filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking one of the dirtiest jobs out of the kitchen and no upfront cost. Control the kitchen chaos with restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer while maximizing efficiency. Visit RTI Inc. Can email customer care at RTI Inc.com or call 888-796-4997 to get started. All of those links will be in the show notes. All right, so I'm going to love that. All right, so you talked about vegetable oils. We also know seed oils, you know, beef, tallow, all that talk to you about the differences. Talk to me about, like, popularity, you know, what's in fashion, what are you guys seeing? What do you guys recommend?

B (16:14)

Yeah. Great. The conversation around seed oils and tallow has been obviously very prominent this year. We've heard a lot of talk about it, and it's nothing new, to be honest with you. Tallow has been around for a long time. Seed oils have been around for a long time as well. And as I mentioned before, we're oil agnostics, so if one works for you, great, we'll get it there. But we do want to dispel rumors and make sure that everybody's addressing it. Right. Don't do it because it's a trend. Right. Tallow is fantastic. It's one of those oils that holds up really, really well under frying conditions. Right. It's. It's a high in saturated fats. That's what makes it stable. And it, it lends a spectacular flavor to food if you want that flavor. Right. So it's important to realize. So you have something that's completely different from seed oil or veg oils, whichever you want to call it. But it's going to perform differently. But it's got to give different properties to the food as well, too. Right. So we just kind of always let customers know that if you want to switch from one to the other, know what you're in for. And then there's things along the line of price. I mean, the fact is, tallow is an expensive product, at least more expensive than things like soybean oil or canola oil.

C (17:24)

It is.

B (17:25)

It'll hold up well, no doubt about it. But you handle it differently, flavor is going to be different. And the truth is, there's a little bit of scarcity to it. There isn't as Much, even close to as much as there is of soybean oil. Sometimes it can run out, sometimes it's tough to get a hold of. So you just have to be able to kind of manage around that. Right.

A (17:46)

Yep. Talk to me about. So I come from the world of fine dining where chefs are very particular.

B (17:53)

Yes.

A (17:53)

About what they use, when they use it, all of that. And I have worked in kitchens that have different kinds of oils because one thing goes in one thing, another thing goes another thing. A third thing goes in a third thing. You must come across this from time to time. So when people want to use different things, how is that conversation navigated?

B (18:11)

Well, I think, again, the usage that they're trying to get out of the oil is what you go for. Right. The deep fryer. And we have, we have customers who have different oils for different fryers.

A (18:19)

Right.

B (18:19)

I mean, some of them have one specific product that they put beef tallow in to deep fry, and then they have another fryer that just gets their french fries and gets their egg rolls and gets all the other things. Right. Because that's that flavor that I tell you about is a great flavor with beef tallow for the right products. But if you don't want that beef flavor in your french fries or if you don't want it in your spring rolls, then you definitely don't want to do that. Right. So it's the same thing as using, as having, you know, extra virgin olive oil by your, by your stove to do sauteing in, right? Yep. I wouldn't say you want to saute in every vegetable oil because you won't get the same performance, but you also don't want to necessarily deep fry in natural virgin olive oil. Right. They all have their uses and you just want to use the proper one. So that's the other part we get to is what are you using it for and is it applicable to these things?

A (19:10)

So when you walk into a kitchen, though, so to pull this thread a little bit more, because again, I have worked place where I've worked with a French chef who is making palm souffle. And that's got to go in one oil for one reason or another. And then they do fries and other sort of fried stuff and that goes in a different oil that I worked at a, the same restaurant did like a Thai style fried snapper. So that was a different, that was a different fryer. And then they would do, you know, crispy fried shallots that was, that were used as a garnish for a couple of different dishes. And that was in the third fryer. So you guys have the capability and the versatility to sort of manage a bunch of different things or as part of the conversation, unifying it, or how does. How do those conversations go?

B (19:51)

I think the conversation on that is really. Which is the one that's your most volume abundant one. Right. We're not going to try to replace anything that's a handheld oil, if you will. You know, this sauteing top oil, things like that. It's really what's going in the fryer. And what's your highest volume product that we're really going to concentrate on that first. Like, you may have three fries with three different things, but maybe one of them is one you're turning over the most. Right. So we'll concentrate on really your. They're your most commercial of those fryers, really, is what it is. And we only deliver one oil to the tank. But if the restaurant is there and has the volume and there's two different kinds of oils going in the fryers, we just put it. We could put an additional tank in and just deliver two different types of oils. If that volume justifies it, then we certainly can. The lines are independent. That's not a problem. I'd love to have that problem, to be honest with you. If you're using that kind of volume and doing different products, we can figure that out for you. There's no doubt.

A (20:50)

Yeah, it's very cool. This would have helped quite a bit back in 2005 when I opened this particular restaurant.

B (20:54)

I will say this. I will always reiterate to a restaurant that use the right oil for your usage. Don't let anybody convince you to change oils if it's going to change your menu. Right. Stick with what you like. And if you're having issues and you want to find something different, great. But I'll never walk in and say, you can just use our oil for everything. Don't worry.

A (21:15)

So that's really. And that's really what I was getting to. Because I think probably one of the concerns is I, again, I come from the world of fine dining. That's. I spent the majority of my time in New York City, fine dining. And people are particular and specific, and they're very deliberate with the choices they make and all of that. And I've certainly seen that dozens of times over. And I guess maybe I was applying some resistance that isn't really there. But the resistance that I can see from some people are, well, sort of my frying needs are more complicated and I Guess I was curious to see how you guys deal with that or have dealt with that in, in the past.

B (21:49)

Yeah, they could be, I'll never dismiss that. I mean, they could be very complicated. We'll, we'll look at your frying needs and just see, hey, maybe you'd be surprised what we've seen, right? We've seen that. We have, we have almost 50,000 restaurants that we serve, right. So we've, we've seen quite a bit. So we may have solutions for what you're looking at that you didn't realize were out there. And I think it's the best we do.

A (22:11)

Yeah, I think that's one of the best parts of using a vendor. And this is any, this goes from software to a POS to a service like this is that a lot of times we like to think we're snowflakes, right? Well, you don't understand what we deal with. It's like, no, no, no. We're with 50,000 different things. So, like, try me. I'm sure we can give you a test case. One of the things I tell all my clients, when you're looking at any software, any service, anything, any vendor, I say, you know, show me five people like me that you've helped and show me how you've helped them so to be able to come forward and say, yep, I understand this operation. So this, this, this, these are three restaurants, for example, where we do something similar. I can show you that we've solved similar problems for them as we have for you. And I think that's incredibly validating, I guess, on the part of an operator.

B (23:00)

I couldn't agree with you more. And I always, I always tell our restaurant operators that you are unique, right? We may have seen your problems before, but they're unique for you. And, and you're a new unique vendor and we'll treat you that way for sure. We'll just pull from our base of knowledge and make sure your issue is withdrawn. I don't want to dismiss anything they come through saying, hey, we've seen this, no problem. And you know, one of the beauties of our company is we have 41 depots around the country, right? My CEO likes to say, hey, every NFL city plus a few, we're there, right? We're not far from you. But each one of those depots has technicians that show up to install this. And they install unique systems for every location. It is not a one size, fit fits all. They come into a restaurant, they review where you would like things. They try to install According to your schedule. They run lines custom for those sites to make sure it fits that unique restaurant operation, what they need. So we do treat everybody as if they're unique, because they are. And our technicians are just top notch and getting it out of the way in a place where you can get to it and you don't see it, you don't know about it. And they train everybody in the restaurant once it's installed. This is how your oil system will work. This is how you can filter the oil. This is how you can make things last. So they teach the chefs, they teach the line cooks. Anyone else that needs to know, because they are all unique. They do. They do have individual idiosyncrasies, if you will, of every kitchen. And we do embrace that. So.

A (24:34)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it. Talk to me about how the process works, because I want to be really respectful of your time. We're winding down here. How does this process work? People say, wow, I didn't realize we could do this. This sounds really cool. I'd love somebody to do all this, like, crappy work that, that I don't really want to do. It's unsafe. How does the conversation begin? Like, how does, how does somebody begin down this road?

B (24:55)

You hear it a thousand times. I'll tell you again. You get on our website, right? Rti-inc.com Restaurant Technologies. We have a local office near you, and all of our depots are listed in there. You can just reach out directly. We have an 800 number in there. Or you can send an email. A local sales rep will come and get in contact with you. We just walk through your operation, give you a very broad based idea of what it is we do, and somebody just come out and visit you and say, hey, we'll take a look and see if this works for you. At the very least, we can give you some information on email or on a phone call. Not very difficult at all. And we love taking those calls.

C (25:32)

Right.

B (25:32)

Obviously, it's what we do.

C (25:33)

We.

B (25:33)

The more we get out, the better the safer restaurants are. And, and I, I should, I should back up for a minute and tell you the one additional product, product that we handle that nobody likes to deal with is we get rid of that used oil. You have no more nasty dumpster out back. That's, you know, you've got to flip the top over. Ugly, disgusting oil. That's taken care of too. So if you're tired of looking at that thing alone, we can help you there because we'll take everything out of there. Clean up your entire spot. But our salespeople will definitely tell you everything you need to know and get you on the right path.

A (26:10)

Yeah, I always say that the information is free and the 45 minutes to learn more about it is so valuable. I always tell people, I'm like, listen, you don't have to use. You don't have to use these guys, but I think you should have a conversation with them and see what they have to say because. And that goes for you guys. It goes for so many people that I have on this podcast. So many of the, the people that I work with, you know, the solutions I come across and I talk to my clients about. I'm like, have a conversation. It's 45 minutes and they'll like, they'll walk through and tell you what they can or can't do, and I think that'll be incredibly helpful.

B (26:41)

Exactly right. Exactly. Couldn't have said it better.

A (26:43)

Love it. We're going to include the link in the show notes as we always do. Ron, any. Any last words of wisdom before we let you out of here?

B (26:52)

Yeah, I mean, eat more fries. That's. That's what we say.

A (26:57)

I love that. That's probably the best answer. I asked some version of this every single time I do a conversation like this. That's by far, by far the best answer I've received. Eat more fries. That's their motto.

B (27:09)

Look at many objections with that one, Ron.

A (27:11)

I appreciate it. I think it's really cool what RTI does again. It was totally foreign to me up until about two years ago and I'm learning. I get better. I get better for my clients and for the listeners here. Appreciate all that you guys do and I appreciate you spending some time chat with us.

B (27:25)

My pleasure. Thank you very much, Chip.

A (27:26)

Thank you again. I want to thank Ron for taking time out of his day to sit and chat with me. The insights of wisdom he's able to pass along. Our second tune on RTI provides a really incredible service, serving over 50,000 restaurants all across the country. If this is something you're interested in, I implore you to connect with Ron. All the links are in the show notes. It's worth a 45 minute conversation. Have someone come out, take a look at your operation, see if there's anything they can do for you. That's it. Again, one final reminder. The P3 mastermind is helping restaurants all over the country to level up and increase the profitability in their restaurants. Literally, this just means how do we drop more of the revenue directly to the bottom line into your pockets. RestaurantStrategyPodcast.com Schedule it's how you start that conversation. Grab some time on the calendar. As always, that link is in the show notes. Appreciate you guys making this show part of your week. I will see you next time.