It is said that a restaurateur has to pay about four percent of his annual turnover for gas and electricity. The massive demand in your restaurant consists mainly of heating, hot water, cooling and lighting. With the current rising prices and the upcoming gas levy, it is therefore worth taking a closer look and checking where you have the greatest savings potential in your restaurant.
We have put together a few tips for saving on gas and electricity for you here:
- Sensitize your team and work with assistive devices
- Make your team aware so that they only turn on unnecessary light sources when they are actually there. For example, the light in the storage room or basement. A notice saying “please turn off lights or “only operate during business hours” can eliminate unnecessary energy hogs.
- Use timers for devices that don’t necessarily need to run during your closing hours.
- Switch your lighting to LEDs – they cost a little more to buy, but save a lot of electricity, last a long time, and are much more environmentally friendly.
- Save energy during the preparation of your food
- Check which foods in your range are very high in energy and replace them with low-energy foods. Steamed, stewed or short-fried foods are much less energy-dense than, for example, long-cooked or stewed foods.
- Energy efficiency class of your devices
- When buying new kitchen appliances, look for a good energy efficiency class. An appliance with the efficiency class A+++ can save up to 60% energy compared to an appliance with the class A. This means that the higher purchase price pays off over the useful life of the appliance. But beware: Larger purchases should pay for themselves after six years at the latest.
- Standby mode
- Don’t put your devices on standby after work, but turn them off. Standby mode is known to continue to consume power.
- The cooling
- Here, too, you can save a lot of energy with a few simple tricks – starting with the right temperatures, for example. A difference of one degree can cause up to 6% more electricity costs. So make sure your appliances are at the right temperature.
- In addition, you should make full use of your refrigerators and rather use a few “well-filled” devices instead of many “half-filled” devices. Even if it might be a bit more difficult to handle, your electricity bill will thank you 😊.
- Regularly remove dust from the cooling fins and make sure that the refrigerator is at least 5 centimeters away from the wall. This can also save a few more KWh.
One last advice: If necessary, an energy consultant is worthwhile for you. Especially if you are thinking about renovating the building, purchasing a heat pump or similar. An energy consultant is covered to 60-80% by the KfW. The consultation takes about 2 working days and at the end you have an energetic expert consultation in your pocket. You will receive a roadmap and a catalog of measures for saving energy and will know afterwards which measure is most likely to pay for itself.
We hope we were able to help you a little with our tips for saving gas and electricity and keep you up to date here. You can find more useful tips here in our news section.