Fast-Food Restaurants Finding New Ways to Boost Energy Efficiency

Sure, fast-food restaurants aren’t exactly the darling of the green movement, but that isn’t stopping some of them from looking for clever ways to reduce energy composition and save some money in the process. The New York Times’ Green Inc. recently posted an article about Current Energy, a company that’s helping restaurants find innovate solutions to cut down on wasted energy.

Bassam Odeh, who runs 34 restaurants in Texas and Louisiana, has just installed a Current Energy system that alerts him with a text message whenever his employees leave the door to a freezer or walk-in refrigerator open. A remarkable success, the system has already slashed his electricity bill by 10 to 20 percent.

Current Energy also recently installed a system at a pizza joint that helps cut down on natural gas consumption. Before the system was installed, it was common for all three of the restaurant’s pizza ovens to be up and running, regardless of how busy it was. By monitoring the amount of people in the restaurant, and turning two of the ovens off and on based on occupancy, the system has already cut the restaurant’s natural gas bill in half.

On the energy creation side of the equation, CNET has reported that a New Jersey Burger King franchise is planning on installing a kinetic-energy capturing device in its drive-through. Essentially a speed bump that captures energy wasted when cars are braking, the system will harvest electricity for the restaurant in a similar manner to that of hybrid cars. With more than 150,000 cars a year rolling through the Hillside restaurant, that’s a lot of potential energy. The company that makes the device, New Energy Technologies, is planning on installing them in toll booths, checkpoints and other heavy traffic spots—so be on the lookout for one in your neck of the woods.

Chances are you don’t have a drive-through window, a walk-in refrigerator or three full-scale pizza ovens at your house, but these stories illustrate some tried-and-true green concepts that apply to everyone: don’t use what you don’t need and keep looking for new ways to harvest energy.