FabShop Magazine - March 2012 - 25

››› Punching

uddy Abraham has lost most of everything in his life – twice. Although these occurrences were tragic, he gained a new career and home through them. The first tragedy changed his career path – from a petroleum engineer to entrepreneur, while the second one cost him many of his possessions when Katrina destroyed his house. During high school and college, Abraham worked at his father’s business servicing and installing beverage dispensing systems in Slidell, La. “I always loved the business, but I never thought that it would be big enough for two of us,” he says. “Primarily it was a one-man operation for my dad. When I graduated from college as a petroleum engineer, he asked me to make a go of it with him. So I wound up not spending one day in an oil patch.” Because of their business expertise and experience, the company became a certified equipment refurbisher for Coca Cola. They took Coke’s old beverage dispensing equipment, refurbished it and resold it. They were one of about five companies throughout the U.S. doing this. But Coke eventually pulled this work away from these companies, bringing it in-house and putting these companies out of business and scrambling for work. “About a year prior to Coca-Cola cutting us loose, I was tinkering around with draft beer dispensers,” says Abraham. “I wanted to stay in the beverage industry, but I didn’t want to be part of soda dispensing, which constituted the main part of our business.” Abraham had been working on a system to keep draft beer cold, having learned that bars have a problem of losing draft beer, because it turns into foam when it’s dispensed warm. “I thought that the beer dispensing business was still wide open, and I developed some dispensing systems along with prototypes that I was testing during the last days of working with Coca-Cola,” he adds.

Without work, he decided to go ahead with his system, eventually calling his company Chill·Rite and his beer-dispensing system Chill·Rite32. His father was with him every step of the way and was his biggest advocate for getting the beer system patented. “I ended up selling my first beer dispenser that would dispense 32-degree draft beer to a

restaurant called Luther’s Barbecue. I used it as a beta site to fine tune it, which worked out for both of us,” mentions Abraham. However the learning curve was difficult, as Abraham had never marketed a niche product before. He thought he could just build it, and the sales would follow. His sister, who had a marketing degree, helped him, and over time

food service company owners liked his system and began buying them. Keeping it cool Abraham’s Chill·Rite32 system keeps beer at 32 degrees. So what’s important about a beer that’s served at 32 degrees? Plenty! To get the maximum content from draft beer kegs, they should be stored in their own walk-in cooler at about 38 to 40 degrees. However, because of the cost to do this, they’re usually kept in a walk-in cooler that shares space with food, says Abraham. When cooks use the cooler throughout the day, the temperature rises to about 50 degrees or even higher. At this temperature, a draft beer keg will allow the beer inside it to change into foam, Abraham mentions. “Most of the draft-beer dispensing systems on the market have a lot of waste because of the beer heating up and turning to foam. We made our system totally independent of needing to store kegs in a walk-in cooler. By keeping beer at 32 degrees, my keg yield is in the high 90 percent range, whereas draft keg beer stored in a walk-in cooler and served at the

Buddy Abraham stands next to a chiller used for his Chill Rite32 system. The chiller’s frame parts are punched.

Parts produced for the Chill Rite systems.

FabShop Magazine - March 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of FabShop Magazine - March 2012