How to Handle Used Cooking Oil in Casinos

Casinos Have Unique Needs

Handling used cooking oil in casinos requires specialized knowledge, experience and equipment. There is no one size fits all used cooking oil system setup for casinos. But, casinos do share a common set of challenges when it comes to disposal of UCO.

Casinos are different than restaurants or country clubs in that they generally have:

• multiple to many restaurants distributed throughout a large building
• restaurants that operate 24/7, 365 days per year
• decentralized used cooking oil containers set far apart
• large volumes of used cooking oil to be gathered and recycled
• many different employees handling hot cooking oil
• strong need to protect employees from risk of injury/burns
• a need for custom plumbing to handle a unique layout
• a need for exceptional reliability in a UCO recycling partner

What this means is that each casino requires a unique design to efficiently, safely and cost effectively manage the disposal and recycling of UCO.

UCO Systems for Casinos with Centralized Storage

If your casino has a centralized UCO storage tank where multiple restaurants dump their oil, one of your biggest concerns is probably spills during transport. As kitchen employees schlep their oil across your facility, it can slosh around and splash out of a container, creating smelly and costly messes for you to worry about. Consider a caddy system. Each restaurant keeps a caddy, which can be stored under their fryer and out of the way. When that caddy is filled with oil, they close and lock the top, roll it over to a central storage tank, plug it in, and pump the oil out.

UCO Systems for Casinos without Centralized Storage

Other casinos don’t have the dedicated space for a communal storage tank. If each restaurant has its own tank outdoors, the risk of smells and spills permeating the premises is multiplied. Instead, consider employing indoor automated systems with custom plumbing or magic wand solutions. The systems are self-contained. The used cooking oil goes straight from the fryer to the tank, with no opportunity for spillage.

D&W Chief Operating Officer Derrick demonstrates a direct-connect system.

Coordinating the Pickup

Once the UCO is deposited in the tanks one has to think through how the UCO recycler gets access to the tank to pump it into the recycling truck. In many cases there is a pipe that goes to the exterior of the building which the UCO collector accesses to pump the oil into his truck.

In other situations, there may be a central location under a building for controlled access by the UCO collector. Less desirable is the collector running a hose pump into the building to access the storage tanks. In that situation scheduling and reliability are imperative and the UCO collector must be very customer focused, reliable and available on an emergency basis.

Choosing Your Used Cooking Oil Recycling Partner

Handling used cooking oil in casinos is complex given the variety of business and architectural issues to be managed. The most important aspect is not the tanks, the technology or the trucks, but the UCO recycling partner. The UCO collector must be very reliable, available on an emergency basis with the ability to respond quickly. No one wants to reach a large call center at 3AM and wait for the customer service agent to track down the right management person who can initiate an emergency service request. Reaching the owner or CEO immediately is what is needed. Sometimes the midsize collector with a track record of service is the best choice.

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