One of the most pressing concerns for restaurants is energy efficiency. But energy usage can be optimized without needing to overhaul operations or purchase new equipment. The first step in optimizing energy efficiency in a restaurant is ensuring that energy consumption is aligned with business volume and the mismatch between the two is minimal.
There are several ways you can optimize energy consumption by aligning consumption and business volume. They include the following;
- Know Your Restaurant’s Service Windows
Every restaurant will have a varied business load in a given day or week. Understating these consumption patterns can help you determine an energy consumption profile for your restaurant that is fairly predictable after a while.
Once you have determined these service windows, you want to set an energy consumption policy that will be suitable for each service window. To do this, you need to understand the equipment and lighting can help.
- Control Kitchen Equipment During Set Up or Shut Down
To run a restaurant successfully, you need to strike a balance between having equipment ready to cook and making sure it doesn’t inflate the energy costs. Having a complete understanding of the energy consumption patterns of your equipment can go a long way in helping you optimize energy consumption. You can take steps like putting equipment on standby, covering the fryer vats an closing the platens of grills to help save on energy costs.
- Control HVAC across service Windows
Controlling the temperature in your restaurant is important for the comfort of the diners just as it is important in the kitchen for safety reasons. But temperature deviations that can be common, can sometimes inflate costs by 5-6%. It is therefore crucial to have a clear heating, ventilation and air-conditioning schedule and ensure that it is aligned with the various service windows.
- Improve Your Efforts Constantly
Most restaurants can fail to benchmark the restaurant in regards to energy consumption mainly because of the many variables involved in the running of a restaurant including menus offered, schedules, business volumes and more. Comparative analysis of energy consumption can help identify operational issues and ensure that you improve with time, successfully optimizing energy consumption and reducing energy costs
- Inform the Staff of the Service Windows
To become and remain energy efficient, you need to make sure that every member of your staff is aware of the service window and the energy policies to be implemented for very service window. You can do that by creating easy to understand energy dashboards that will get every staff member on board with the plan. This is an easy way to ensure the energy optimization plan you put in place is carried out to fruition. It is also a great way to ensure accountability and that you are able to quantify your results, identify any problem areas and leakages and easily improve when necessary.
With these measures in place, you should see your energy bills reduce significantly.
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