Milo's

The Burgers and Fries are Sizzling at Milo's

Mix a gorgeous autumn Saturday with a big game. Add thousands of famished, frenzied fans, and you have any restaurateur's recipe for a busy weekend. Al Tomlin, co-owner of Milo's in Auburn, Alabama opened his franchise in September 1994 - on the Friday before Auburn University's first home football game of the season. "We jumped right into deep water," he recollects, "but good planning paid off."

These fries are a cut above.

By the end of the hectic weekend, Tomlin was especially pleased with the equipment he'd selected, including the electric deep-fat fryer. The fryer, an EPRI Frymaster, cooks ups to 20 pounds of French Fries at a time. And, it cooks them more economically and efficiently than the gas fryers Tomlin was accustomed to using at the Milo's he managed in Birmingham. "The electric fryer is definitely a cut above what I used before," he says.

Keeping the heat out of the kitchen.

Tomlin says the electric fryer helps keep down the kitchen heat and saves cooking oil. In addition, it provides good recovery time and is easy and inexpensive to maintain. "Gas fryers dump 750 degrees of heat into a kitchen," Tomlin says, "but with the electric fryer, the only heat is from the pan itself. I always said if I ever owned my own restaurant, I'd make sure the kitchen stayed cool. So I put 30 tons of air-conditioning in the building, including 15 tons in the kitchen. With the electric fryer, I may not have needed that much."

Tomlin says that a cool kitchen pays off with better productivity.

"Employees tend to work better when the kitchen is cool," he says. "They're not worn out and frazzled.I'm wearing two hats as an owner and a manager, so I tend to watch each employee's use of time more carefully."

Tomlin says his electric fryer also cuts the cost of cooking oil. "I get 18 days out of a vat of shortening, as opposed to 12 or 13 days with gas fryers," he says. "A fryer holds about 7.5 gallons of vegetable oil, so that's a considerable savings."

Recovery time - the time needed for a fryer to heat back up to an optimum temperature after a load is dropped - is no problem with modern commercial fryers.

"With my fryer, the heat stays in and recovery time is good," Tomlin says.

Where are the fans?

Although Tomlin's equipment is still almost new, he expects maintenance costs on the fryer to be low. "There are no fans, like the ones on gas fryers to go out, and no contacts, except the on/off switch," he says. It's easier to clean, too. There's no carbon build-up and the vat isn't as deep as those in gas fryers. Our kitchens are very open, and our customers see everything, so cleanliness and appearance are important."

Meanwhile, Dean Chitwood, Tomlin's former boss, is planning to add another Birmingham Milo's to his string of seven restaurants. This store will also have electric fryers.