Yes, that's the whole point of the service for caterers. Instead of a fixed route, you request a pickup when a wedding, gala, or holiday run actually fills your commissary container, and you scale back during the quiet weeks. There's no surcharge for an extra pickup during a peak week and no penalty for a slow one, and a real person answers the phone to add or move a collection so it never sits in a queue.

Yes. California requires a manifest for every commercial used cooking oil (inedible kitchen grease) collection, documenting the chain of custody to a licensed renderer, there's no seasonal exemption for catering. Electronic manifests are explicitly legal under the California Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, with a 2-year minimum retention. You get a CDFA-compliant digital manifest after every pickup, stored in the Filtrate portal well beyond that minimum. See the rule: www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/california/3-CCR-1180.24

Shared commissaries often pool oil from several operators into one container, but each operator is individually responsible for its own disposal documentation. The Filtrate portal handles this with role-based access, corporate or the commissary landlord can see everything, while each catering brand or tenant sees only its own pickup history and manifests. You can run a single master account for the whole commissary or separate accounts per tenant, whichever keeps everyone's compliance trail clean. The CDFA Inedible Kitchen Grease program licenses the transporters and renderers built to document this chain of custody: www.cdfa.ca.gov/AHFSS/MPES/

The service is free to you and month-to-month, no long-term contract, no minimum volume, and you can cancel anytime. Pickup, the locked anti-theft container, delivery, seasonal container swaps, and the digital manifests are all included at no charge. We make our money on the recovered oil itself, which is why scheduled pickup costs you nothing.

Every gallon is recycled through a CDFA-licensed renderer into feedstock for biodiesel and renewable diesel. Renewable diesel reduces carbon intensity by about 65% on average versus petroleum diesel according to the DOE and CARB ( afdc.energy.gov/fuels/renewable-diesel ), and waste-feedstock biodiesel and renewable diesel deliver roughly 79 to 86% lower lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions per the DOE Alternative Fuels Data Center ( afdc.energy.gov/fuels/biodiesel-production ). It's a documented sustainability story you can put in a client pitch.

Used cooking oil is a real theft target, industry estimates put the value stolen each year in the tens of millions, and the USDA has valued a typical 100-pound load near twenty-five dollars. An unsecured container is both a standing loss and a gap in your chain of custody, because stolen oil never makes it onto a manifest. Every account gets a free locked, anti-theft container so your volume and your documentation both stay intact.

Yes. Used cooking oil is a qualifying waste feedstock under the EPA's Renewable Fuel Standard, where biomass-based diesel must show at least a 50% lifecycle greenhouse-gas reduction to qualify. That's why the oil from your fryers has real value as renewable-fuel feedstock once it's collected and documented through a licensed renderer. EPA program overview: www.epa.gov/renewable-fuel-standard/overview-renewable-fuel-standard-program

We currently cover Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego, the Inland Empire, the Bay Area, and Tacoma/PNW, and we're expanding. If your commissary or event kitchens are outside those regions, tell us where you operate and we'll notify you as we reach you, and if some of your locations are in-region and others aren't, we'll set up the ones we can cover now.