Recapturing Some Lost Green:

In the world of restaurant operations, we mainly focus on the important stuff like the customer, food quality, food cost and labor cost. Energy cost continues to be something that we often believe is difficult to control, taking time and adding capital cost to the operation... Perhaps this is true in the sense that once you've harvested the low-hanging fruit, the costs in terms of time and technology can potentially add to an operators' capital and time budgets. However, in this age of greenwashing and cost-cutting, it is easy to overlook some easy ways to both cut operational costs and improve the green signature of your operation. The amount of energy (and the corresponding cost) wasted due to associate-operated/controlled equipment within the back of the house (and to some extent, the front of the house) is significant! In fact, up to 15% of the energy cost center is attributable to a lack of energy sense awareness.

In a QSR restaurant this is as much as $4,300 per year, per location in energy cost. And in terms of the sales required to offset this? That's at-minimum, $86,000 per year per location. That's like losing 8,600 pizza orders! The green aspect of this is also significant as the energy waste adds over 15 tons of CO2 to the environment.

We think that getting your restaurant on a Green Diet is easy and can be cost-effective. A recent article on QSRWeb.com (http://www.qsrweb.com/article.php?id=16849) and PizzaMarketplace.com (http://www.pizzamarketplace.com/article.php?id=16851&na=1) provides you with some easy, cost-effective (quick ROI) steps to cutting waste and improving efficiency. I hope you check out one of the two sites (QSRWeb.com and PizzaMarketplace.com) for this story.

So if you want to recapture some lost green and improve the green posture of your restaurant, consider cutting out the waste and some quick & effective conservation measures.

Energy Wasting Away? Want to Recapture 10%?

Thinking about how to improve profitability and "get some green" in this tough environment? You don't have to look too hard for the answers... Energy waste is prevalent in every BOH and FOH I visit.

Open back doors, propped open coolers, coffee makers under thermostats, all equipment running 4 hours prior to opening, tap-water-based defrosting and lights/equipment left on....It's not that restaurant teams endeavor to waste money and finite resources... it's that they just don't realized that there's an issue. Perhaps you don't even realize it... To appreciate the depth of the problem it's essential to see your FOH and BOH with a 'fresh set of eyes' seeing your operations with a fresh perspective. This is all about identifying the opportunities to curtail wasteful processes & behaviors, then revamping training & best practices and then measuring & verifying results from changes you make.

There are many resources out on the web that discuss the 10 percent opportunity... the opportunity to cut energy costs by 10 percent and improve net equivalent sales ($1 of Cost is equal to $20 - $25 of Sales).

In a 2,500 square foot restaurant, waste curtailment efforts can capture more than $15,000 in cost avoidance which is @ $300,000 in equivalent sales.

So if you're interested in capturing the 10 percent you're losing to energy waste, maybe it's time to get serious and find workable solutions.