Shari's Consumes Less & Saves More With A New Recipe For Strategic Energy Management

When new CEO, Bruce MacDiarmid, joined Shari's Restaurants in 2008, he challenged the Shari's team to evaluate any operational costs that didn't directly enhance their guest's restaurant dining experience. A financial evaluation identified utility charges as the third largest controllable expense making them one of the primary targets for this efficiency initiative. There are two ways to achieve utility savings, lower rates and reduce consumption. Most of Shari's restaurants are in regulated energy markets, where rates are controlled by the state and not open to competition between private companies. This meant the company had little control over the prices of their utility rates, making efforts to reduce consumption a top priority. To achieve the savings goals, Shari's first needed to know where to focus their efforts. Through a combination of data management, audits, and energy performance initiatives, the company was able to gain visibility across their chain, identify outliers and implement a corporate wide energy management program to improve efficiencies and cut costs.

Through their work with Ecova, Shari's knew that they had the data necessary to reduce and control consumption; they just needed additional support to interpret and identify the most effective opportunities. Through the expense management process, Shari's had visibility into the individual site use and cost information for each of the restaurants in their chain. Ecova's team of energy experts developed performance reports to accurately assess consumption data using quantifiable portfolio energy metrics at the individual site level. Each of the 104 Shari's restaurants were grouped by square footage, guest count, and location, and then ranked according to their monthly electric and gas usage. The report revealed the total amount of energy used at each restaurant and drew a comparative analysis. Findings provided evidence that restaurants, while similar in square footage and foot traffic, often had vast discrepancies in energy and water use. Further investigation was needed to understand what was causing such varying consumption levels. Store and equipment audits were conducted at a few of the locations with the highest consumption and evaluated for improvements, while those that were performing well were used to model behavior after. Through further monitoring of the performance reporting statistics, Shari's was able to quantify the effectiveness of their efforts in regard to cost and consumption. These reports continue to guide Shari's efficiency efforts allowing them to clearly communicate and provide motivation for reduced consumption and improved energy efficiencies.