Shreveport’s Frymaster Cooks Up Global Prominence
Published Mar 11, 2008
Chef Yahya, who has worked at several of Shreveport-Bossier City’s leading restaurants, uses a Frymaster.
Were it not for P.F. Ratcliff’s stubborn ingenuity, the corporals of Col. Sanders might still be slaving over a grease-spattering skillet.
And pity the poor sentinels standing watch over inefficient French fry cookers.
Seventy years ago, Ratcliff struggled with some of the same frying frustrations at his Shreveport barbecue restaurant. Determined to find a better way, he visited a sheet metal shop and, using chalk, drew the design for the first Frymaster open-vat system on the floor.
Soon, Ratcliff outfitted his restaurant with easy-to-clean fryers that drew attention. He began making more fryers from – where else? – a garage. Today, the Frymaster company he founded remains in Shreveport and sprawls over 500,000 square feet, with 600 employees producing more commercial fryers than any other manufacturer.
To Ratcliff’s open-pot fryer, the company has added tube-pot fryers for foods that produce heavier sediment, such as chicken, and a flat-bottomed fryer for floating foods, such as shrimp. The latter two types sell under the Dean brand, reflecting a merger that led to all the fryers being produced in Shreveport.
“It’s really all about what is your application,” says Brenda Fried Humphreys, Frymaster’s vice president of marketing. “And we can serve you with the right item for your menu.”
Frymaster innovations include built-in filtering systems, high-efficiency infrared burners and programmable controls. In 1994, London-based Enodis PLC – a worldwide manufacturer of commercial food-service equipment – acquired Frymaster.
Other Frymaster products include pasta cookers, rethermalizers (cookers that reconstitute boiling bag-contained foods) and holding cabinets. Another brand, Varimixer, represents a line of mixers that range from as few as five quarts to huge commercial applications of 150 quarts for mixing pizza dough or doughnuts.
At the heart of each Frymaster development is a desire to accommodate changing food-service needs. “We have the ability to customize products and meet those needs,” Humphreys says.
“If [customers] need something a little bit different than we offer as a stock product, we can do that for them.”
Story by Gary Perilloux
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