Energy Saving in the Catering Industry
Restaurant and Hotel owners in fact all commercial kitchen operators have been very slow in realising the crippling effects of ever increasing energy costs in their kitchens.
The old stories of the kitchen porter turning on all the gas rings first thing in the morning have proved difficult to stop. However, increasingly the call is now “The electricity bill for this place is horrendous!”
Even when confronted with these spiralling costs the opportunity to choose more efficient equipment when old equipment needs to be replaced is often missed.
It is still very much the minority who ask for a whole life costing before buying a major item of kit. The bottom line purchase price remains the measure for the majority.
Many equipment manufacturers or are doing their bit such as Electrolux and Adande by offering innovative equipment particularly in refrigeration, but have to compete with cheap product coming in by the container load. Energy efficient induction hobs now a standard in modern domestic kitchens are still not the first choice for most standard commercial kitchens.
But how easy is to for a customer to obtain the information about energy costs in the kitchen and indeed for each piece of equipment? The answer is it is not at all easy. Firstly energy costs for the kitchen alone are not readily available unless specific metering or software is in place. Secondly there is as yet no standard for comparing one piece of commercial catering or refrigeration equipment with another. Manufacturers present their products in a way which highlights only the good features. Very few people have the time to trawl through the information to extract the relevant measures and that assumes they are given.
Leading building designers are now asking for information relating to energy usage, running costs and lifetime costs in an electronic format that can be provided to architects and engineers. It seems that the catering equipment industry is not yet in a position to provide this information due to the current lack of agreed EU standards for energy measurement etc. It will eventually be available but probably not for a further 2 or 3 years.
Ironically it may be that he boot is moving to the other foot. Especially if when the client finally asks, “How much is this really going to cost me?” he can’t get an answer.
