We built the standard the industry never had.

The National Cooking Oil Management Association exists because of an absence. There is no federal regulation in the United States that tells a restaurant when to change its frying oil. No TPM threshold. No required testing frequency. No certification for the people managing what is, by volume and by impact, one of the most consequential ingredients in commercial cooking.

Germany mandates discard at 27% TPM. Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, and France set the line at 25%. The United States has nothing — and in the gap, a million-plus foodservice outlets operate on instinct, arbitrary schedules, and visual guesswork.

NCOMA was built by the people who have been inside America's fryers for decades — not by regulators, not by academics, but by the industry itself. Operators who opened 240+ restaurants, engineers who invented patented filtration systems, and strategists who saw the same problem from different angles and decided it was time for a standard.

The association's first act was to produce the Certified Cooking Oil Management Guide— a 10-part reference text covering oil chemistry, degradation science, fryer types, filtration systems, ingredient variables, testing methods, and a complete certification framework. It draws on published research from Choe & Min, Grootveld, Saguy & Dana, the PREDIMED trial, USDA FoodData Central, and original frying performance data from Fedepalma/Universidad de Caldas.

From that foundation, NCOMA built three things: a knowledge-based exam for individual certification (the Certified Oil Manager designation), an operational inspection standard for kitchens, and the WIYO! consumer seal — so diners can see, at a glance, whether their restaurant manages its oil to a real standard.

Our mission is simple: raise the standard of oil management in every commercial kitchen in this country. One kitchen at a time.