FROM THE FIELD
November 2004
What Kind of 'Fuelage' You Getting?

Funny how we don’t care about energy until we’re in trouble. We focus on labor, because it’s a bigger share of costs. Then we focus on healthcare. Then we focus on food contracts.

We struggle to shave 15 hours per month out of a unit’s part-time labor, while we don’t even wonder about saving $2,000 per year in utilities. Do the math, and depending on your labor costs, they’re roughly equivalent ideas. Go figure.

So we’re in trouble again on the energy front. Crude oil’s up over $50 a barrel at this writing, and while it’s true few of us run kerosene in the fryers, it’s only a matter of time before high oil prices create upward price pressure on other forms of energy.

So where’s energy, and more broadly, utility efficiency, on your radar screen these days? And what do you communicate to your suppliers about efficiency?

At a recent industry meeting, it was interesting to see that several audience members perceived that three big operators on a panel had put energy low on their priority lists.

We don't care about energy until we're in trouble.  Which is why we're in trouble again.

Not that the panelists said that, exactly, but they left that impression. They indicated productivity and food quality come first—which certainly is the only intelligent thing you can say. After all, if you can’t get the job done, the efficiency question is purely academic. But the upshot was that efficiency was in the bottom half of a short list of topics discussed.

But whether efficiency is third out of three priorities, or third out of a dozen, you’d better be giving it a lot of thought. You can control how much energy and water you spend per unit of food product prepared.

Look for low-flow pre-rinse nozzles for dirty dish tables, for example. For fifty bucks, you’ll save a minimum of $300 per year on water, and probably closer to double or triple that. And these are nozzles that do get the job done.

Want to save several hundred to a thousand bucks a year? Look for boilerless, connectionless steamers. Most give you 85% or 90% of the productivity—product per hour—at less than 10% of the water and sewer use compared to conventional, fully plumbed, boiler-equipped models. And don’t forget that less water consumption also means less energy for heating it.

Looking for a refrigerator, fryer, hot holding cabinet or steamer? Qualify the models that meet your performance specs, then look for the Energy Star label. It’s now available in all four categories, and it signifies products rated in the top 25% of energy efficiency for their category.

Look for new, improved high efficiency fryers, too. And a new generation of water-saving warewashers. It’s not as if the engineers haven’t been cranking out new choices.

And above all, look for standardized performance test results, which will show you productivity as well as energy data. The best of the best? If at all possible, look for test data from standardized ASTM test protocols, performed by third-party testers.

Brian Ward
Chief Editor