Environment-friendly, “green” policies and thinking are increasingly popular in foodservice and other industries, as concerns about global warming and dwindling resources intensify and the business case for being responsible grows stronger.
And the trend will not be ignored at the upcoming FS/TEC and The NAFEM Show events.
The “greening” of foodservice technology and equipment is expected to result in a growing number of FS/TEC and NAFEM Show exhibit hall conversations about computers and equipment meeting the latest Energy Star standards or other efficiency guidelines. Some exhibitors likely will have different types of environmental impact talking points for showgoers, including Exit41, a supplier of technology for remote order-processing centers serving the drive-thru lanes of multiple restaurants.
Officials of Andover, Mass.-based Exit41 recently analyzed the efficiency—in terms of speed of service and reduced vehicle idle times—of a restaurant using a double-lane drive-thru and remote call center manned by specially trained order takers. Compared with a restaurant using one lane and fielding orders in-house with multitasking employees, a dual-lane, remote-call-center-served unit has the potential to reduce carbon emissions by 36,000 pounds per year and save 1,898 gallons of gasoline, they maintain. That analysis assumes the restaurant in question generates annual sales of $1.7 million.
FSTC’s Young: Small energy-saving efforts can make big impact Nation’s Restaurant News spoke with Richard Young of the Food Service Technology Center in San Ramon, Calif., about the “greening” occurring throughout the restaurant industry after his presentation at the recent Western Foodservice & Hospitality Expo in Los Angeles. Highlights of the conversation follow. What’s an example you like to cite of the potential savings from “going green”? Old steamers had a boiler in them, and they wasted a lot of water and wasted a lot of heat. Newer, simpler steamers—they call them boilerless or connectionless—are basically a sealed cavity with no drain, and you fill it with water. The water usage goes way down, from about 40 gallons an hour to 2 gallons a day…saving quite a bit of money [in water costs]. In an example based on 10 cents a kilowatt hour [for electricity] and an eight-year-ownership life cycle, the energy savings over eight years [using an Energy Star steamer versus a boiler-based model] is about $17,000. This piece of equipment costs about $3,500, [so a working older steamer] is a candidate for early removal. Any other examples come to mind? If you have an uninsulated hot-food-holding cabinet, you are spending a lot of money to keep that box warm and putting a lot of heat out into your kitchen. Insulated hot-food-holding cabinets—that’s the Energy Star standard—save you so much energy that over five years you could pay for…two [additional] Energy Star cabinets. That’s another appliance that’s a candidate for early pullout because the savings are so huge. What can the typical independent restaurateur do to become greener? The first and best step is to look at lighting. There is a lot of inefficient lighting in foodservice and a lot of low-cost lighting solutions. If you are using compact fluorescent lamps [bulbs], and you are doing it nicely and elegantly, you can reduce your energy consumption dramatically and boost your energy savings, and your customers will never know. There are now small lamps called cold cathode compact fluorescent lamps. You can get flame-tip lamps and other things that will go into a [hanging] pendant. In the very near future you’re going to see LED [light-emitting diode] lamps that make a lot of sense for foodservice. The other place where you can save [a lot of] energy is in your operations. [You can save by] turning off appliances, making sure you are not wasting water, making sure your exhaust hoods go off at night. As mentioned earlier, replacing older pieces of equipment with more efficient models can save money, right? Absolutely. The thing to do is to have either the California rebate [qualifying equipment] list or Energy Star [appliance] list in hand. That way, on Friday night, when your fryer breaks down, you don’t call the dealership in a panic and buy the cheapest thing off the floor and get stuck with it for five years. Know ahead of time what you want. That’s smart purchasing. Are there many commercial equipment options [linked to] Energy Star? Right now there are four categories in the Energy Star world: reach-in refrigerators and freezers, steamers, hot-food-holding cabinets, and fryers. In October, in time for The NAFEM Show, you will see Energy Star dishwashers, and by Jan. 1, 2008, you’ll see Energy Star ice machines. Everything you mentioned about lighting, operational practices and smart equipment purchasing for independents also applies to the chain side of the business. What steps can chains take to become greener? The chains have been familiar with the Food Service Technology Center for a while. They often have the advantage of having someone tasked with trying to save energy. There is one case where a big chain looked at its cooking platform and redesigned an entire piece of equipment themselves to save energy, which is pretty radical. Certainly, the chains are all interested in green buildings, [and] they all have some type of initiative moving forward or are somehow sticking their toe in the water and investigating. What will it take to spur the industry forward? Part of what is spurring the industry to action is the social call for green buildings. On the practical side, [the incentive] is rising energy costs and the notion that energy costs should continue rising. We don’t see any energy source popping up that is going to make electricity too cheap to meter, and we know that natural gas is a deregulated commodity that we’ve seen rise and fall in price. A lot of the big chains have done a good job of tightening down their labor costs and tightening down their food costs, and getting more and more competitive and corporate. Now they are looking at energy. [But] foodservice is not crawling with energy managers. If all the chains in America suddenly got religion about being green, are there enough green products and technologies to meet their needs? I think the good news for foodservice is that there is a lot of room for improvement, [and] you don’t have to do something that is outrageous or exotic to get these savings. Energy Star fryers or otherwise high-efficiency fryers are out there and they are easy to get. There is no shortage of [compact fluorescent] lamps and efficient equipment. Most of the barriers [to greening] come down to learning what you should do and having the corporate will to do it.— Alan J. Liddle
The NAFEM Show educational program will feature two sessions centered on green issues, including a “Defining the Green Restaurant” presentation by Richard Young of the Food Service Technology Center, or FSTC. Based in San Ramon, Calif., and operated by Fisher-Nickel Inc., the center tests commercial kitchen equipment for energy efficiency and performance. It is financed by California utility customers and administered by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. under the auspices of California’s Public Utilities Commission.
FSTC representatives say the center’s public funding eliminates undue manufacturer influence in equipment testing. Lists of energy-efficient equipment, including those complying with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy’s Energy Star standards, are available at the FSTC’s Internet site at
FS/TEC-NAFEM combo: Additional technology and equipment to see, more ways to learn