The hamburger chain Wahlburgers, which is owned by Hollywood stars Mark and Donnie Wahlberg and their brother Paul, has significantly reduced both the grease buildup in and odour discharged from their kitchen exhaust with AirMaid.

Wahlburgers is a young fast-growing hamburger chain that saw the light of day in 2011 when it opened its first restaurant in Hingham, just outside Boston. Under the motto: Our Family, Our Story, Our Burgers, the Wahlberg brothers have built up a unique food culture and business that is based on their family’s history, traditions and love of food.

The chain’s development and rapid expansion has also become a reality series with the same name, Wahlburgers, which allows viewers to follow the daily operations, family discussions and the management’s strategic planning. It is a success story with infectious glow, humour and heart. (The photos above are thanks to the TV channel A&E Network’s facebook page.)

DRAMATIC GREASE REDUCTION WITH AIRMAID

In September 2015, Wahlburgers installed three AirMaid ozone generators into one of their newly built restaurants, located at Fenway Park in Boston. The ventilation cleaning company Under Pressure cleans and inspects ventilation ducts at several of Wahlburgers’ restaurants, including those at Fenway, Hingham and Lynnfield.

After only a few months with AirMaid in operation, Under Pressure could see that the Fenway restaurant had significantly less grease in its ducts, compared with its sister restaurants in Hingham and Lynnfield.

Under Pressure said “the volume of grease in the Fenway restaurant’s kitchen ventilation is not even in the vicinity of what you can see in the ducts in Hingham”. The engineers also noted that “the farther away from the kitchen hood, the fewer the grease accumulations”. This is also in line with what one would normally expect of an AirMaid installation, because grease and odours are eliminated when the ozone reacts with the particles.

The following photo series allows you to see the differences between the various ventilation systems at the restaurants in Hingham and Fenway, with and without AirMaid. The photos were taken and documented in 2016 by Under Pressure’s engineers.

At Hingham after 6 months of normal operation without AirMaid:

At Fenway on 18 July 2016 with AirMaid:

At Fenway on 20 September 2016 with AirMaid:

PROBLEMS NORMALLY ARISE WHEN OZONE OR A SIMILAR SYSTEM ARE NOT USED

The restaurants at Hingham and Fenway have the same menu and cook the same type of food. The photo documentation above would tend to indicate that larger volumes of food are made in the kitchen at Hingham, but actually, the opposite is the case. Under Pressure points out that the amount of grease that is shown in the Hingham photos is normal at restaurants with similar ventilation systems as Wahlburgers that are not fitted with AirMaid or other air purification systems. During manual cleaning, ventilation engineers, like Under Pressure, usually turn off and inspect the ducts every three to six months.