a couple of outdoor deep frying questions.

[Bigheaded]

I'm kicking around the idea of setting up a street vendor food cart a few days a week and doing Smash Burgers and fries. I'll only be using the deep fryer for fries, I did a lot of Googling for oil life and 6 times came up a lot, with a lot of people saying only 2-3. My plan is either to get a 2.5 gal Cajun deep fryer or the Loco 2 burner deep fryer. And I plan to use Beef Shortening. I know a lot of things factor in here, but if I'm only doing fries at around 350f, 6 uses that doesn't tell me much here. Since I'll be using for 3-4 hours that's way longer than a normal person. Figuring out the burger costs is simple, but the oil thing's really throwing me off. To the point I can't even estimate. My plan is to set up a stand a few days a week and make burgers and fries for 3 or 4 hours. From what I read Beef Shortening doesn't break nearly as quickly as oil. And I can get it in 50lb boxes at Smart & Final for a decent price. Now I'm just trying to wrap my head around how long I could make that 50lb last until I gotta buy more.

Unknowns aside, maybe someone could give me a rough estimate of the oil life they think I could get out of a 2.5 gal fryer? I know the Cajun has a channel at the bottom where the bits fall that extends the oil life. But there shouldn't be much debris for fries. And I'll be filtering it after I'm done. From what I'm reading on Google it seems I might wind up going through an astronomical amount of beef shortening here. If I had an understanding of what maybe to expect here it'd help me figure out what I'd have to charge for this to be feasible.

 

[Gonna Smoke]

First off I'll say that I'm not sure about using oil 6 times. Is that for all frying or just fries? Fries don't seem to dirty up the oil like things that are breaded or seasoned so I'd think that cooking fries alone you could use it more than 6 times.

Anyway, I buy frying oil in 35 lb. boxes and that's about 4½ gallons. Doing some math tells me that 50 lbs. would be just under 6½ gallons and that would fill your fryer about 2.6 times. Multiply that by 6 says you can use a 50 lb. box for about 15.6 cooks. Divide the cost of the box by 15.6 should give you a cost per 6 cooks. Someone else tell me if my math is correct or not, I've had 4 beers...

Edit to add that I didn't really answer your question...

 

[Bigheaded]

First off I'll say that I'm not sure about using oil 6 times. Is that for all frying or just fries? Fries don't seem to dirty up the oil like things that are breaded or seasoned so I'd think that cooking fries alone you could use it more than 6 times.

Anyway, I buy frying oil in 35 lb. boxes and that's about 4½ gallons. Doing some math tells me that 50 lbs. would be just under 6½ gallons and that would fill your fryer about 2.6 times. Multiply that by 6 says you can use a 50 lb. box for about 15.6 cooks. Divide the cost of the box by 15.6 should give you a cost per 6 cooks. Someone else tell me if my math is correct or not, I've had 4 beers...

Edit to add that I didn't really answer your question...

You did answer it, sort of at least you gave me some feedback. I already did the math on how much 50lb works out to in gallons. Seem's like only doing fries that aren't seasoned or coated like curly fries the oil would stay cleaned a lot longer. But 2.5x refills is meaningless when I don't know how long a batch of fat will last.

IF 6 cooks is accurate, I'm trying to figure out what's considered a cook, there's a huge difference between frying 6 batches of something, or using it for cooks on 6 different nights. Beef Shortening lasts longer, okay. And fries don't have breading or batter, so it might be 12 cooks and 1 cook might be good for a full evening if I clean the oil good after. I can't visualize my prices until I figure out an idea of what the cost will be. Something even in the ballpark would be super useful. I'd like to have my brain understand this better before I even attempt to do anything here beyond think about it. If I have to use a new fryer full of fat every night that'll cost a lot more than if I can make it last for 3 or 4 nights.

Googling I found people claiming they keep cleaning and using the same oil for 6 months on a semi regular basis. But that seems like it's probably not a great idea if you'll be making food for paying customers lol. And I read somewhere else beef shortening holds up a lot longer than Canoil or some other oil. But what's a lot longer?

I don't plan to buy the fryer until December, and when I do I can test it out and see for myself. But if I had a rough idea of what to expect that could help me understand what I should be looking to charge.