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To some it’s just gritty grease.

But to a Naples company it’s liquid gold. The grease used to deep fry everything from chicken and corn dogs to french fries and conch fritters is what’s fueling the business — and its rapid growth.

The company, Bio-Fuel Professionals Inc., collects used vegetable oil from upwards of 460 restaurants, mainly in Lee and Collier counties.

Once cleaned, the oil becomes fuel to power everything from an 18-wheeler to a Mercedes-Benz four-door sedan.

Some of the filtered oil is mixed with lye and methanol to make biodiesel, a cleaner, more environmentally friendly fuel. That’s done in Palm Beach County.

Most of the company’s oil ends up being sold as straight fuel for converted diesel engines.

The vegetable oil is sold at its headquarters off Exchange Avenue. About 40 customers regularly buy it.

“We do deliver if a company is buying a lot,” said Jesse Goges, 28, founder and president.

Two 2,200-gallon tanker trucks — and a 1,200-gallon tanker trailer — are on the road virtually all day Monday through Friday picking up the oil from restaurants in Southwest Florida. In one day, they can make more than 50 stops.

“Surprisingly we are growing pretty rapidly,” Goges said. “I think our demand exceeds our supply probably at least 10 to one.”

His father, George Goges, 62, is a partner in the business, which has about a half a dozen employees. “My father actually talked about this for years and that is what got myself intrigued about it,” the younger Goges said.

Both men, who have seen their other jobs slow with a housing slump in Southwest Florida, were looking for new opportunities. Jesse was working in the roofing business and George owns a pool company.

“I wouldn’t have been able to survive if I didn’t get into something else,” said Jesse, who was born and raised in Naples.

Now, he finds it tough to keep up with his new business.

“Right now we are running a 160-mile radius with our trucks and that is about the max,” he said.

There are plans to add more trucks and more stops.

“We are spreading farther north. We go all the way up to Bradenton right now and pretty soon we will get into

Central Florida and we will get into the east coast of Florida as well because we are just outgrowing our local economy here,” Goges said.

With just one production plant in Naples, plans are in the works to build another one in Polk County.

By 2010, the company hopes to have a third plant on Florida’s east coast.

“Our books show we will be profitable. But all of our profits are going back into the company and to continue the expansion,” Goges said.

The company provides metal containers to restaurants to dump their dirty oil into. The oil is picked up about every two weeks.

The other day, a welder was busy at the plant building new containers, which are painted a bright green. The company has problems with vegetable oil bandits.

“Grease theft wasn’t even existent a few years ago. It was actually garbage. Restaurants would pay to get rid of it. Now it has turned into brown gold,” Goges said.

One container was recently recovered from a restaurant that had been stolen by an employee and painted blue.

“There are home brewers out there and that is where most of the theft comes from,” Goges said.

So how exactly is the oil cleaned after it’s collected? Goges doesn’t want to give away any of his “trade secrets.”

“That’s the tricky part,” he said. “It’s full of french fries and bread crumbs and it’s a very unappealing substance in there.”

It goes into a few different tanks for filtering and then the clean oil is pumped out.

“It takes at least 72 hours to clean a batch,” Goges said.

Sports bars Buffalo Chips off Old 41 Road in Bonita Springs and Pelican Larry’s off Immokalee Road in North Naples are some of its top oil suppliers.

“Barbecue restaurants always seem to produce a lot,” Goges said.

Chinese restaurants are another good source because they use a better quality soybean oil.

Ironically, the company also gets its oil from gas stations, which sell a lot of fried food.

Other suppliers include Chrissy’s, Alice Sweetwater’s, La Bamba and all the Moe’s Southwest Grill restaurants in Southwest Florida.

Companies have signed long-term contracts and get paid anywhere from 35 cents to 85 cents a gallon for the used oil, depending on its type.

“There are a few restaurants that just love the idea of being environmentally friendly,” Goges said. “We’ve had customers not want to take any money on it and just get the service of getting it picked up in a timely manner.”

The oil otherwise might be thrown in the trash or dumped down the drain. “It’s actually a good thing that they get this recycled properly,” Goges said.

The demand for the oil comes from local businesses looking to save money on fuel and from environmentally conscious and penny-pinching drivers.

The company sells about 30,000 gallons of its clean oil a month. On average, customers are savings $1 to $2 per gallon on fuel.

The pure vegetable oil goes for $2.50 a gallon and the biodiesel sells for $3 a gallon.

Since the company was founded a little over a year ago, it has sold about half a million gallons of oil, Goges said.

“Some of our clients come to us with their hands up, ready to shut their doors simply because they cannot afford the rising diesel costs and still be as competitive as the next company,” he said.

“In reality, all trade and construction jobs are more competitive these days due to the lack of work. This also means more companies are giving lower bids to try to land the job, but in actuality the prices of materials and fuel are increasing.”

One of its larger customers is Florida Ready Mix, a concrete company in Fort Myers, which has converted many of its trucks to run on vegetable oil to cut down on its transportation costs, he said.

“We’ve got a lot of individuals that we help too,” Goges said. “We didn’t want to just go commercial and eliminate the small guys. There are a lot of families that will come by and pick up this fuel as well.”

Bio-Fuel Professionals has a few competitors in Southwest Florida, but none of them are local. Restaurant Technologies Inc., headquartered in Minneapolis, recycles frying oils from about 100 customers in Lee and Collier counties, including Pelican Larry’s. The company has 17,000 customers throughout the U.S., including grocery delis, hospitals, colleges and universities.

As part of its oil management system, Restaurant Technologies also delivers clean oil. It installs two tanks in the kitchen, one for the fresh oil and one for the used oil, as well as a locked outdoor fill box. Oil lines are connected to the tanks so employees no longer have to fill or empty fryers.

“RTI has always recycled waste oil, with no additional charge to customers, as part of its program,” said Sue Lee, a company spokeswoman, in an e-mail.

“In 2008, nearly 80 percent of the waste oil it collects will be recycled for use in biofuels.”