Commercial, Energy Efficiency  -  March 10, 2016

Shari's Café and Pies joins U.S. DOE's Better Buildings Challenge

Shari’s Café and Pies restaurant chain recently became the first full-service restaurant to join the DOE Better Buildings Challenge, committing to a 20% reduction in energy intensity by 2025 across nearly 400,000 square feet of restaurant space. 

Jodenne Scott, director of financial support services and energy sustainability said in a Better Buildings Beat Blog post: 

We have been retrofitting our gas broilers, implementing lighting changes, installing energy management systems, installing EC motors in freezers and coolers, and using aerators on all faucets, to name a few measures.  A standard purchasing guide for energy efficient equipment helps the restaurants stay on track when replacing equipment.  These projects definitely create the path for energy reduction, but only to a certain point.  To further move the needle, without impacting our guests, we needed to focus on employee behavior. 

The post goes on to explain that Shari’s created a strategic resource management plan, supported by the executive team, and feels that employee engagement is one of the major components needed to achieve maximum energy efficiency gains. By creating posters for conservation measures, dedicated to each position and breaking it down by how it would impact them, Shari's makes it tangible and something employees can relate to, Scott wrote.

The company also puts out a bi-monthly newsletter that covers a variety of topics, including HVAC maintenance, lighting, irrigation, and shows progress toward the current year’s energy reduction goal for. The newsletter also highlights the five top energy reducers during the past two months and shares their creative energy reduction strategies.

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