Phillips 66, Restaurant Technologies Team on Used Cooking Oil SAF

Phillips 66 and Restaurant Technologies have formed an industry collaboration aimed at converting used cooking oil (UCO) collected from foodservice operators into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), the companies announced, marking one of the more visible cross-sector partnerships linking the food-and-beverage supply chain directly to the aviation decarbonisation effort.

The partnership connects two distinct nodes of the value chain: Restaurant Technologies, which manages cooking-oil logistics for tens of thousands of restaurant, hospitality, and institutional foodservice accounts across North America, and Phillips 66, a downstream energy major with refining infrastructure capable of processing UCO into SAF through hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids (HEFA) pathways.

Why UCO Supply Matters

Used cooking oil has emerged as one of the most commercially viable feedstocks for SAF production precisely because it is a waste stream with established collection infrastructure rather than a purpose-grown crop. For foodservice operators — from fast-casual chains to hospital cafeterias — the arrangement offers a documented end-use for spent fryer oil that increasingly satisfies corporate sustainability reporting requirements and, in some jurisdictions, qualifies for regulatory credit schemes.

Supply constraints remain the central challenge facing the SAF sector. The International Air Transport Association estimates the industry will need to replace a significant portion of conventional jet fuel with lower-carbon alternatives by 2050, yet current SAF output represents a fraction of total aviation fuel demand. Scaling UCO collection from the fragmented foodservice industry is widely viewed by fuel producers and policymakers as a near-term lever, given that the feedstock is already being generated daily across hundreds of thousands of kitchens in the United States alone.

Collection Infrastructure as Competitive Edge

Restaurant Technologies' core business — automated oil management systems installed at customer sites — gives the company a structural advantage in UCO aggregation. Its platform handles delivery of fresh frying oil and scheduled removal of spent oil, creating a closed-loop system that reduces handling risk for operators while generating a consolidated, traceable feedstock supply. That traceability is increasingly important: regulators and airlines purchasing SAF under long-term offtake agreements require chain-of-custody documentation to verify feedstock provenance and calculate lifecycle carbon intensity.

For Phillips 66, the agreement extends its feedstock sourcing strategy for renewable fuels, a segment the company has been building alongside its conventional refining operations. Converting UCO at scale requires reliable, high-volume supply commitments, and partnerships with aggregators like Restaurant Technologies are designed to provide that visibility.

The foodservice-to-fuel pathway also carries implications for grocery and food-retail operators who manage commercial kitchens and face similar pressure to account for waste-stream disposition. As UCO-to-SAF programs expand, food manufacturers and large-scale food-production facilities with significant frying operations could represent the next tier of feedstock suppliers drawn into similar value-chain arrangements.

Industry observers tracking alternative protein and sustainable ingredient supply chains note that UCO pricing has firmed in recent years as demand from both biodiesel and SAF producers has intensified, creating a commodity dynamic that foodservice operators and their oil-management partners are increasingly monitoring as a secondary revenue consideration.

Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.