Grease Lighting

Grease Lighting

Technology innovation awards - Sarasota/Manatee runner-up by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Controlling and eliminating sewage and waste requires creative technology. It's an underground effort - literally.

Jim Haberman says he sells the invisible. One of the must-read books he hands out to employees is a sales tome with the same title and mantra.

"It's not an easy thing to get your arms around," says Haberman, president and CEO of Lakewood Ranch-based BESTechnologies Inc. "It's not something you can go up to and kick."

But while the technology and the core product, BESTech Biofeed, might not be visible or tangible, it is useful to customers who need it to prevent their restaurants from smelling like pure garbage. Few things could be more visible than seeing customers leave a restaurant due to a sewage leak or back up.

Biofeed is an environmentally friendly, non-chemical, powdered and freeze-dried bacteria solution that eliminates grease blockages and drain line odors in restaurants and other facilities with drainage systems. The technology, created by company founder and current chairman, H.R. Williams, along with scientists at Iowa State University, has been refined and updated during the past 15 years. The company's main customers are restaurants, wastewater treatment plants and large-scale kitchens in places such as hotels, hospitals and prisons.

The Biofeed formula is made up of a proprietary blend of live vegetative and "spore-forming" bacteria that are benign and naturally occurring microorganisms. The bacteria secretes enzymes that cut the grease into fatty acids and glycerol. The fatty acids and glycerol are then consumed by the bacteria and turned into carbon dioxide and water.

The product works through a dispenser and spray container, which are tested and assembled in the company's 12,000-square-foot facility. The solution is automatically sent into a facility's primary drain line on a 24-hour basis through the dispenser. Meanwhile, a service technician can use the spray bottle to reach all the floor, sink and beverage tower drains.

One of the best features of the product, Haberman says, is that when used properly it doesn't just move the grease down the sewage line, as other, more established products do. Instead, it completely eliminates the grease.

And for that feature alone, many customers swear by it. Bob Kirscher, co-owner of the Broken Egg restaurants in Siesta Key and Lakewood Ranch, has been using the Biofeed product for about seven years. "The savings on plumbing and the elimination of headaches is worth the minimal cost," says Kirscher.

BESTechnologies has sold its products to thousands of other restaurants and kitchen facilities nationwide, as well in several other countries.

Haberman declines to release revenue numbers, only to say the company has had periods of explosive growth followed by a more moderate period recently. The industry is ultra-competitive, he says, although no other firms have the company's technology. "It's a fairly immature industry," Haberman says. "Literally 98% of the products sold are not manufactured by the people selling it."