Free Used Cooking Oil Pickup for Santa Monica Restaurants and Hotels

A restaurant on the Third Street Promenade has no street curb out front, a hotel on Ocean Avenue runs a restaurant, banquet service and room service at the same time, and a cafe on Montana Avenue fills one fryer at a steady pace. All three want the oil handled without it ever sitting open behind the kitchen.

Santa Monica restaurants and hotels get used cooking oil picked up by Oil Guyz at no cost, with no contract and no minimum. Each kitchen gets a locked bin set where it already handles deliveries and trash, or a compact locked caddy inside when there is no outdoor space. The oil is pumped in place, a CDFA-compliant digital manifest is emailed after every visit, and the oil is recycled into renewable fuel.

Send the form on this page with the restaurant or hotel address, or call (310) 810-2488. A person calls back the same business day to settle the bin and the pickup day, and the first pickup follows in 3 to 5 business days.

Downtown Santa Monica packs a lot of fryers into a small space, and every one of them makes used cooking oil that has to leave the building. The Third Street Promenade is a pedestrian mall with parking structures around it, so the kitchens on it have no street curb out front. Oil Guyz starts by asking where the kitchen already takes its deliveries and trash, then sets the locked bin for its cooking oil at that spot. A kitchen with no outdoor space at all gets a compact locked caddy, and the oil is pumped in place. The kitchen can ask for an early-day stop, and the first call settles the spot and the pickup day.

Along Ocean Avenue, a full-service hotel runs several kitchens under one roof: a restaurant, banquet service, room service and a staff cafeteria. Oil Guyz puts every outlet on one free account, with the bin at the service entrance and caddies inside where an outlet has no room outside. The Pier is its own small food district, with a directory of more than 30 independent businesses that runs from full-service restaurants to push carts. Busy weekends and holidays fill the fryers faster, and a kitchen can call to add a pickup of used cooking oil or move to a larger bin at no cost.

Away from the water, Santa Monica cooks every day for residents, and the cooking oil adds up on every block. Oil Guyz serves the restaurants of Main Street in Ocean Park, the shops and cafes along Montana Avenue, the Pico Boulevard dining strip, the Wilshire Boulevard corridor, and the Mid-City blocks around Bergamot Station. The terms are the same everywhere on the route: the bin costs nothing, the pickup day is set, and a manifest follows each visit. What comes out of the fryers ends up as feedstock for renewable diesel and biodiesel.