Residential grease traps and what to do with your used cooking oil in Louisville, KY

What Should I Do With Used Cooking Oil in Louisville, KY?

/in , , , /by

Grease traps are a wonderful invention that commercial kitchens use to keep their systems running, appliances sanitary, procedures up to code, and fats, oils, and grease out of the water system. There is so much cooking oil needed to make things crispy, cooked fully, tasting good, and not sticking to anything – sounds like a win-win situation, right? It is! For restaurants and other kitchens, at least.

But what about the average joe? What about the residential side? We have deep fryers and Dutch ovens and plenty of used cooking oils and grease that, when we’re cleaning up, has always been a pain in the rear. You can’t pour it down the sink because it clogs up the drain, you can’t pour it outside because it’s bad for the environment, kills your lawncare efforts, and can drain into your water supply, and in large amounts, pouring it into the garbage or in a sack just isn’t possible without a mess and lots of regret.

So what do you do with your leftover cooking oil? There are 3 recommended, responsible ways to dispose of it.

1. Reuse

Oil is not a one-and-done food! In the deep fryer, when cooled and strained after each use, oil can be used 8-10 times! Each time, you’ll notice your oil level decreasing but, depending on the size of the fryer you’re using and food you’re frying, you don’t have to replenish it! Let it go down and then, at the end when it’s at a manageable amount, you can reuse it for other cooking methods, like pan-frying, marinating, and seasoning.

Between uses, make sure you store your oil in an air-tight container and in a cool, dark place. The pantry will usually work just fine, but if you’re worried, you can always store it in the refrigerator if you have space! When brought down to a certain temperature, some oils can coagulate and change consistencies, but as soon as it is heated, it will change back. Not to worry!

2. Repurpose

Cooking oil doesn’t always have to stay in the kitchen, either! If you have used cooking oil that you’ve strained any food particles out of but don’t want to reuse for cooking endeavors, then that oil is perfectly fine to use as:

  • Pet Food Addition
    • NOTE: Adding a small amount to your pet’s food every now and then can improve taste and provide extra fats for skin and coat health. Be sure not to give them too much or they might get an upset stomach or gain weight!
  • A Paint Stripper
  • Hinge, Lock, or Wheel Lubricant
  • Rust Prevention
  • Leather Protection

If you’re a serial DIYer or project-finder, then your used cooking oil and grease might come in handy!

3. Recycle

If you just want it out of your hair, then residential cooking oil and grease can be recycled! Perhaps not in the same way you recycle cans and bottles, but most recycling centers will take your containers of used cooking oil off your hands. Empty milk jugs, secure glass bottles with a screw-on lids, and empty takeout containers with pop-on lids are all acceptable receptacles to bring to your nearest recycling center.

A bonus of Louisville’s oil recycling is that they have partnered with the private firm, Oil Tech, to reuse the oil as biodiesel!

You can find Louisville and Jefferson County’s guidelines on residential cooking oil disposal and resources to their locations here.

If you own a restaurant, café, or grocery store in or near Louisville, and are searching for grease trap cleaning services, look no further than Moon Grease Trap Cleaning. We have over 20 years of experience serving Louisville’s food industry with our top-of-the-line PROVac machine, and are proud to offer a cleaning service where dragging big hoses or heavy equipment through your restaurant isn’t required! Ready to get started? Visit our website and to fill out a contact form and get your free estimate, or give us a call at 502-776-2199. We look forward to working with you!

Why You Shouldn't Clean Your Own Grease Traps and the Benefits of Hiring Professional Grease Trap Cleaners

What’s Wrong With DIY Grease Trap Cleaning?

/in , , /by

DIY grease trap cleaning can be a temptation for many, whether you’ve looked at the price vs the self-labor and decided you wanted to cut out the middle man and learn, or you’ve been in the business long enough to think that it would be an easy enough task. And while some have success with DIY cleaning, the costs, risks, and losses don’t usually justify the DIY method when professional grease trap cleaners exist for your comfort, efficiency, and safety.

The Grease Just Keeps Coming Back

Since grease trap require regular, consistent cleaning to keep within regulatory compliance, the job is unfortunately not a one-and-done type. For the convenience and efficiency that come with regular, auto-scheduled grease trap cleaning services, it is well worth the responsibility to be taken out of your hands and into those of professionals so that you can spend your time doing all the jobs specific to your individual business that can’t be done by outside services, like grease trap cleaning can.

In addition to the economics of saved time, the grease has to go somewhere – and not just any old place, but the correct waste disposal plants. Do you have the time to do the proper research on correct disposal? Do you have the means to transport the waste?

If you’ve answered yes to all these considerations and if the time is available, then what’s the harm in DIYing it?

Serious Consequences for Small Mistakes

Well, the harm manifests in different ways that have effects ranging from venue-specific to city-wide. If cleaned incorrectly, grease traps have the high potential to smoke out your customers and your employees with rancid odors, putrid grease runoff, and contaminated plumbing that can run all the way to the city’s sewer system to collect and back-up – which, if traced back to your establishment, can incur some serious fines and consequences for damages and lack of regulation standards.

Not only does it have likely consequences for you personally, but you also run the risk of damaging the environment. Grease runoff into grass, soil, or waterways is non-soluble pollution that can throw ecosystems off and invite pests to breed in conditions that you unintentionally created.

Acquiring Long-Term Costs

After taking a look at professional cleaning processes, it might be a good time to look at the tools and materials you’d need to match the quality of a professional clean; with the high-end instruments they use because it’s their specialty, the question, then, becomes one of:

“Are you willing to sacrifice quality for small cost-cuts?”

If the answer is still yes, there are factors to consider about long-term costs that may arise with DIY cleaning, such as:

  • Money from Time-Loss
  • Proper Equipment Costs
  • Responsibility for Fines Incurred by Improper Cleaning
  • Transportation of Waste to the Proper Facilities
  • Equipment and Plumbing Damage
  • Spill Clean-Up
  • Safety Measures

All of these facets are included in professional grease trap cleaning, and with Moon Grease Trap Cleaning being locally owned and operated, you’d be contributing to small businesses of Louisville, as well, by allowing them to do their jobs so that your business can thrive.

The Unpleasant Reality

When it all comes down to it, grease trap cleaning is just not a pleasant job to do without the correct tools. It’s smelly, dirty, tedious, and the risk of toxic fumes and grease spills are not fun to have to consider.

Whether it’s you or your employees, DIY grease trap cleaning will always leave the job to someone who may not have known the undesirable task was included in their job description, and that’s not a surprise anyone wants to find sitting at the top of their to-do list, especially not when the process usually happens either before customers begin arriving or after everyone else has left for the day.

Professional grease trap cleaners?

Fortunately for any restaurant owner out there, regular grease trap cleaning is in our job description – anytime, anywhere, anyone. Moon Grease Trap Cleaning offers you a service that is fast, reliable, efficient, and convenient so that the dirty work is out of your hands and into those of our experts.

Ready to get started? Visit our website for a free estimate, or give us a call at 502-776-2199. We look forward to working with you! 

Ghost Kitchens are a New Restaurant Model

What Are Ghost Kitchens? Inside The Revolutionary Food Industry Trend

/in , , /by

Ever heard of “ghost kitchens”? Also known as virtual kitchens, shadow kitchens, and cloud kitchens, this new restaurant model offers delivery-only and pickup-only food offerings. That means there’s nowhere to sit and no definable storefront. Customers must place orders online, call, use third party apps, or use drive-throughs to get their food. 

While similar “kitchen-only” food preparation and processing facilities have existed for decades, “ghost kitchens” are unique in that they are technically restaurants, just without seating. In doing so, they lower overhead and operational costs, free up parking, and are able to produce much more food at faster rates. 

Ghost kitchens have grown in recent years for several reasons. For one, the rise of food delivery apps such as Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash has opened up a huge market for food delivery. This trend has only continued to increase during the pandemic, as physical storefronts were forced to close down and people stayed at home to stay safe. Now, as we face unprecedented supply chain and food industry issues, costs of food production are higher than ever. Many restaurants and chefs have turned to ghost kitchens as a way to save money and stay in business. 

Inside Louisville’s Newest Ghost Kitchen

This March, Chicago’s Jerk Tacos opened up in West Louisville. Located on South 30th Street, this Caribbean-style restaurant offers jerk pizza, jerk tacos, and more, all with no physical seating. Customers must place an order online or by calling. 

According to owner and executive chef Aaron Williams, this business model helps cut overhead costs, allowing them to provide high quality food at lower prices. In coming months, we’ll likely see more and more restaurants turning to this business model or similar endeavors.

Grease Trap Cleaning in Louisville, Kentucky

Whether you run a traditional restaurant or a ghost kitchen, you’re gonna have grease! As a locally-owned full-service company with over 30 years of experience, Moon Grease Trap Cleaning offers restaurants and food-industry organizations a variety of services, including routine grease trap cleaning and grease interceptor cleaning. We are passionate about disposing of waste in an environmentally-friendly manner and maintain complete records to make sure your grease trap is one less thing you have to worry about.

Our team of experts can manage and schedule your restaurant grease trap service on a timely basis, ensuring that you meet all required regulations. Setting up a regular service schedule is recommended in order to avoid issues that can arise from clogged or congested pipelines leading to the main sewer line. 

Ready to get started? Visit our website for a free estimate, or give us a call at 502-776-2199. We look forward to working with you! 

Moon Companies offers grease trap cleaning to Louisville and New Albany, Indiana

Grease Trap Cleaning in New Albany, Indiana

/in , /by

New Albany, Indiana is located 4 miles northeast of Louisville, a short trip across the Ohio River. With a population of 37,000, New Albany offers a small town charm and a vibrant, growing culinary, retail and arts scene. Popular sites of interest include the Carnegie Art and History Center, the Riverfront Amphitheatre, the River Run Family Water Park, and the New Albany Farmer’s Market. Top-rated restaurants include The Exchange Pub and Kitchen, Dragon King’s Daughter, Agave + Rye, Brooklyn and The Butcher, and the New Albanian Brewing Company. Foodies, families, antique lovers, theatre-goers and history nerds alike can all find something to do in New Albany!

Founded in 1813 as a hub of shipping and boat building, New Albany grew to be the largest city in Indiana. While it no longer holds that title, New Albany is still home to five historic preservation districts . New Albany’s rich history is evident in structures like the stunning Culbertson Mansion State Historic Site, the Scribner House, the nearby Falls of the Ohio State Park. 

Moon Grease Trap Cleaning is proud to service New Albany, Indiana, and the surrounding areas. We provide regularly scheduled grease trap cleaning services for any size restaurant or food preparation location. Our highly-skilled grease trap cleaning technicians will thoroughly remove, clean and dispose of all grease, wastewater, and solid material from your grease trap system. Keep reading to find out about how our professional grease trap cleaning services in New Albany works. 

How Do I Schedule A Grease Trap Cleaning with Moon?

Are you a business owner, wondering how to book a grease trap cleaning appointment with Moon? Just give us a call at 502-776-2199 or fill out our website contact form! We’ll schedule your service, provide you with a free cost estimate and answer any questions you may have. 

How Does Grease Trap Cleaning Work?

Once you’ve confirmed your grease trap service appointment, our professional team members will come to your location.  Most grease traps are a small metal tank, under the sink in your building. We’ll use a top-of-the-line PROvac hose to efficiently and safely pump your grease trap or grease trap interceptor. The entire process is incredibly quick and very quiet, so that the grease trap cleaning can be done during your business hours.

Why Should I Get A Grease Trap Cleaning?

You can’t ignore your grease traps. Failing to properly handle your grease traps can lead to law violations, expensive servicing, or business closures, due to unsanitary conditions. That’s why choosing to invest in a local company that cares about your continual success and quality of service is of the highest importance.

As a MSD Certified Hauler and member of the Kentucky Restaurant Association, we are certified experts in grease trap cleaning, fully committed to keeping your business compliant with state and federal laws. Whether your business requires monthly servicing or chooses to use us on a needed basis, our skilled and hardworking team is happy to provide affordable and environmentally-friendly service. Contact us today!

What happens to used grease and cooking oils? Grease trap cleaning

Used Grease and Cooking Oils

/in , /by

Grease and used cooking oil: if you own a restaurant, you probably produce plenty of these as a byproduct of cooking. You may already know that grease traps are an important way to filter these out from your wastewater. But did you know that the used grease and oils they collect are actually quite useful and sought after? Let’s take a deeper dive into used restaurant grease and oils. 

Uses for Grease and Oils 

There are around 4.4 billion pounds of used cooking oil generated by the food service industry each year in North America alone. Up until the 1990’s, these byproducts were primarily used in the rendering industry. Cleaned and processed oils are useful for everything from animal feed to paint and plastics, and people in the industry pursued these uses for years. But in the 1990’s, another use emerged: biofuel. When properly cleaned and filtered, used oils and greases can be converted into valuable fuel. The rendering industry began to use the oil in mass for biofuels, with significant positive effects. For one, reusing old oils and grease is cheaper than relying on new fuel. Plus, the low carbon biofuel is just as effective as diesel fuel, but with up to 85% fewer carbon emissions.

With a clear benefit to reusing these oils, an industry continued to develop. There have actually been government mandates for refineries that require a certain amount of biofuel to be added to petroleum fuels too. These factors and others have led to a high value on used restaurant oils and grease. 

The Rise of the Grease Thief

With soaring value came an opportunity for unsavory thievery. More and more people with an eye for the rising market value began to steal used restaurant grease. They found plenty of opportunity, with lots of businesses storing their byproducts in traps or interceptors outside their buildings. When unsecured, this makes for an easy target and payday on this new liquid gold. 

Of course, selling requires a buyer. Unfortunately, there seem to be plenty of people willing to look the other way on the source of used oils and grease. While many biofuel companies perform their due diligence to vet potential sellers, some have not worked hard enough to help weed out illegitimate sales. Companies have faced some pressure to start examining sources more rigorously. 

What This Means for Restaurants

Fortunately, there’s a lot restaurants can do to help prevent this theft. Monitoring trap and interceptor levels between servicing is an important way to tell if there has been any theft. Plus, they can even install fences and other security measures to obscure access and ensure protection. They can also move their infrastructure to indoor traps to add a lot of security. 

Don’t forget- just as security is crucial, so is a regular maintenance schedule! Moon Grease Traps offers servicing for grease interceptors and traps at any establishment. From a single grease trap, to one per sink in larger establishments, to an outdoor interceptor, we have you covered. Schedule your next grease service by contacting Moon Grease Trap Cleaning at 502-776-2199. We are happy to answer any and all questions you may have!

Grease Trap Cleaning with ProVac

5 Helpful Tips To Keep Your Commercial Kitchen Clean

/in , /by

Looking to keep your commercial kitchen clean?

 

As a restaurant owner, you know that your establishment is judged by the quality of your service and food. Unsanitary conditions in food prep and cooking areas can prove to be hazardous not just for your customers but employees too. Surfaces, equipment, and areas that have been poorly cleaned can quickly become the perfect environment for foodborne pathogens, bacteria, and mold to breed very rapidly. That can result in dwindling customers and revenue, accidents, injuries, illnesses as well as a loss of productivity. This is why it’s essential to keep your commercial kitchen as clean as possible.

 

Commercial kitchens can be chaotic, and at the end of the day, it can seem impossible to clean thoroughly. Most staff members that work in commercial kitchens find cleaning these spaces a daunting task. Some may even end up cutting corners in their work. When tasks are either improperly done or overlooked, it can result in problems down the road. If you are struggling to know what steps to follow to keep your commercial kitchen thoroughly clean, here are some useful tips:

 

Tip #1: Train Your Team To Clean

If you opt to keep the cleaning tasks in-house rather than hiring commercial cleaners, it is important to have a checklist and appropriate training so that your team members know how to clean. While most have likely had experience cleaning a household kitchen, keeping a commercial kitchen clean is a much bigger job. Following a proven process is advisable so that every aspect of the job gets done consistently and in a timely manner. This includes a detailed list of tasks that keep your kitchen sanitized and hygienic at all times. A clean kitchen is a reflection of the professionalism of your business and its focus on excellence.

 

Tip #2 Clean Out All The Trash Every Day

Trash can build up pretty quickly in commercial kitchens. There are a lot of food scraps, green waste, and packaging that get discarded into the bins during the food prep process as well as leftovers from the dining areas. It doesn’t take long for the bins to overflow, and the trash needs to be cleaned out regularly in the right manner, or it will send out a wrong message to your customers. Make sure certain staff members are given the job of cleaning the trash can with regularity. It is equally important to have the cans adequately cleaned and dried before replacing the bags. That will help to get rid of any foul smell that arises from the garbage.

 

Tip #3: Dust & Mop All Areas Promptly and Properly

If you do not have carpeted floors in your restaurant, it’s crucial that you dust and mop all areas properly. Make sure that someone sweeps the floors regularly as that will remove all the dust and debris. After that, a good mopping will help ensure that all the floor surfaces are thoroughly clean. You can use a mix of water and soap during mopping. The floor will have to be mopped again to ensure that there is no soapy residue. You can add a disinfectant in the final mopping stage.

 

Tip #4: Clean Cooking Equipment Regularly

The simplest way to maintain the cleanliness of your kitchen equipment is to clean all spills when they occur. However, in busy kitchens with lots of orders and the hustle and bustle, this might not always be possible. In these situations, you’d have to use commercial-grade cleaners and non-abrasive pads to clean all the equipment at the end of each day. Make sure you use organic cleaners for cleaning all equipment surfaces as well as counter tops. This will help ensure that no toxic substances are lingering in your kitchen.

 

Tip #5: Clean Out Your Commercial Refrigeration Units

Establish a checklist for cleaning a commercial refrigeration unit. This may include tasks like emptying shelves, wiping and disinfecting shelving units, disposing of any expired or moldy foods, and vacuuming components.

 

Tip #6: Make Sure To Clean Out Your Grease Traps

Commercial kitchens have grease traps or grease interceptors to catch as much grease and waste as possible before going down the disposal. These systems need to be cleaned out on a regular scheduled basis. The frequency of grease trap cleaning in part depends on the volume of food your kitchen produces and also the types of foods. Many commercial kitchens need grease trap cleaning on a monthly basis. While this is something that can be done in house, hiring a grease trap cleaning service is typically easier. The contents of the grease traps need to be handled and disposed of according to specific regulations, which may be more difficult to deal with in house.

 

Companies like Moon Grease Trap Cleaning are here to help you with this component of your clean kitchen. For more details, call 502-776-2199.