How Much Frying Oil Does a Restaurant Use? How to Calculate and Plan Orders

There is no single answer to how much frying oil a restaurant uses: a café with one small fryer might use around a hundred liters a month, while a busy chicken or fish-and-chips shop can use that in a week. But you can work out your own figure quickly, and knowing it helps you buy the right pack sizes, order at the right intervals and spot when oil is being wasted. This guide shows how.

Where frying oil goes

Oil leaves a fryer in two ways:

• Oil changes. When oil is spent, the whole fryer is drained and refilled. How often depends on what you fry, how many hours the fryer runs, how well the oil is looked after and how stable the oil is.
• Top-ups. Between changes, food absorbs oil and carries it out of the fryer, and more is lost in filtering and on equipment, so the level drops and you top up with fresh oil. Busy fryers can need several liters a day.

The simple formula

Weekly oil use = (fryer capacity × oil changes per week) + (daily top-up × days open), added up for all your fryers.

To use it, you need three numbers:

1. Fryer capacity in liters, from the fryer’s plate or manual. Fryers sold in the US are often rated in pounds of oil: at about 0.92 kg per liter, a 35-lb fryer holds roughly 17 liters, a 40-lb fryer about 20 liters and a 50-lb fryer about 25 liters.
2. How often you change the oil, per fryer.
3. How much you top up each day. If you don’t know, mark the level after filling and measure what you add over a week.

Worked examples

A café with one small fryer

One 15-liter fryer, oil changed once a week, topped up with about 1.5 liters a day, open seven days:

15 + (1.5 × 7) = about 25.5 liters a week, or roughly 110 liters a month.

A restaurant with two fryers

Two 25-liter fryers, oil changed once a week, each topped up with about 3 liters a day:

(2 × 25) + (2 × 3 × 7) = 92 liters a week, or about 400 liters a month.

A chain of 20 restaurants

If each restaurant uses about 60 liters a week, the chain uses about 1,200 liters a week. At that rate, a 20,000-liter flexitank delivered to a central warehouse lasts roughly four months; alternatively, each restaurant can order 20-liter jerrycans.

These are illustrations only. Your own figures depend on your menu, equipment, opening hours and how you look after the oil.

What changes your usage

• What you fry. Battered, breaded and starchy foods absorb more oil and shed crumbs that break it down; fish and strongly flavored foods also shorten its life through flavor transfer.
• Hours and temperature. Long hours at high temperature wear oil out faster. Most frying is done at about 160–180 °C (320–355 °F); hotter oil does not cook much faster but breaks down sooner.
• Oil care. Daily filtering, skimming, regular topping up and turning the fryer down in quiet periods all extend oil life.
• The oil itself. Stable oils, such as high-oleic oils, palm olein and frying blends, usually last longer between changes than standard oils. Our guide to the best oil for commercial deep frying compares them.
• Water and salt. Ice, water and salt dropped into the fryer damage oil quickly; shake off ice and season away from the fryer.

Change oil on condition, not on habit

Many kitchens change oil on a fixed day, whether it needs it or not. A handheld total polar compounds (TPC) tester shows the oil’s real condition in seconds. German frying-oil guidance treats oil above 24% TPC as spent, and India’s regulator FSSAI does not allow oil above 25% TPC to be used. Testing at the same point each day lets you change oil only when it needs changing, which can cut both waste and cost, and protects food quality.

Turning usage into an order

1. Work out your monthly use with the formula above, and add a margin for busy periods.
2. Choose packs that suit your kitchen. 20-liter jerrycans fill or top up a commercial fryer easily, and 5-liter bottles suit small fryers. High-volume kitchens with pumping equipment can use 200-liter drums or 1,000-liter IBC totes. See our guide to choosing a bulk pack.
3. Set your order interval. Our minimum is 1,000 liters per quote, across any mix of oils and packs: that is 50 jerrycans, 50 cases of four 5-liter bottles, five drums or one IBC tote. The restaurant in our example, using about 400 liters a month, would order every ten weeks or so.
4. Stay within shelf life. Refined frying oils keep for up to 18 months unopened, and high-oleic oils up to 24 months, so a two- or three-month supply is well within it. See our guide to cooking oil shelf life.
5. Combine your other oils. Add olive oil, canola oil for the sauté station or a specialty oil to the same quote to make up the minimum and cut deliveries.

Keep a simple oil log

Record each delivery, each oil change and each top-up, and each collection of used oil. After a month you will know your real usage per fryer, see whether a change in oil or routine is paying off, and have the records some regulators ask for. Our guide to used cooking oil disposal and recycling explains what to do with spent oil.

When you know your monthly figure, add the frying oils you need to your quote list and tell us your weekly usage; we will suggest pack sizes that suit your kitchen.

Sources

• OFI Magazine: Deep frying regulatory update (DGF polar compounds recommendation)
• FSSAI: Guidance note on used cooking oil
• Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/2158 on acrylamide (frying temperatures)