Waste is the enemy of profit. A successful quick service restaurant (QSR) stores, prepares, and serves a huge volume of food, and keeps thousands of dollars in refrigerated inventory onsite—and a key way to keep that food fresh is a refrigeration monitoring system.
The typical QSR also uses roughly 5 to 10X the energy per square foot of other commercial spaces. This food and energy use is a normal part of business, and some degree of waste in both may be unavoidable, even in a well-run QSR environment. However, restaurant refrigeration monitoring systems can help drastically reduce both.
Energy-Star-rated appliances, LED Lighting, and other energy-efficient technologies have become essential across restaurants. But many operators still rely on the meter outside their building to measure their electrical use and use only one thermometer per unit to monitor their refrigerators and freezers.
This approach is outdated, and worse—it wastes money.
This is a huge opportunity for most operators to save energy and to protect their inventory. The trick? Using specialized restaurant refrigeration monitoring systems. The advanced features and integrated systems of modern refrigeration monitoring systems have significant impact on overall restaurant energy efficiency, and provide a wide range of benefits.
That’s why more and more operators are making this technology part of their success.
No QSR completely ignores its refrigerators or freezers, the energy they use, or the precious food inventory they preserve. Yet, keeping an eye on electric bills, asking employees to watch a thermometer on the side of a unit (which will often be inaccurate), and occasionally making adjustments in hopes of keeping food at a certain temperature isn’t enough to prevent waste.
Instead, state-of-the-art commercial refrigeration monitoring systems use integrated hardware and software to deliver energy efficiency. These integrations create a system of invaluable alerts to identify potential malfunction or improper usage, and avert failure of units and loss of food inventory.
Refrigeration monitoring and control systems work by managing and minimizing energy use, making them one of the most valuable contributors to overall restaurant energy efficiency.
Source: Pexels
An unprecedented amount of useful data about your refrigeration and freezer units is collected by multiple thermostats and humidity sensors integrated with IoT (Internet of Things) smart meters.
This data is transmitted to a central management platform, which uses the smart metering technology to make adjustments to optimize performance and energy use. That includes cycling motor and fan activity to save up to 60% of energy costs while maintaining constant, ideal temperatures.
Electric companies charge varying rates for power at different times of day, and the AI technologies of more advanced systems can schedule cycles to displace as much kW/hours as possible to low-cost points in the day. They can also act as a virtual VFD (Variable Frequency Drive), allowing the benefits of subtle control to motors that are often too small for an actual VFD.
Remote refrigeration monitoring systems also include systems of alerts to draw attention to problems that need manual attention, immediately.
Restaurants experience an average of two major food inventory loss events due to improper or malfunctioning refrigeration/freezing each year. Sometimes seals on units fail, or components malfunction in ways that risk an unacceptable rise in temperature.
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Unfortunately, it is also all too common for restaurant staff to overlook improperly closed lids or doors on refrigeration units, or even to intentionally prop them open for convenience.
Proper monitoring systems include alarms that notify on-site staff of such events and send text and email messages to offsite management.
These alerts notify them of the location and nature of the problem, allowing appropriate intervention. The best systems also send alerts identifying small irregularities in refrigeration function early, so they can be repaired or adjusted before they might break down and require costly repairs or replacements.
However, with the reduced waste in both energy and food inventory that it can save, upgrading to a proper monitoring and management system for your refrigeration systems is an important and impactful move. This is especially true if you can make it part of a broader energy efficiency and technology upgrade.
Luckily, there is now a powerful option for restaurant operators to do just that, without the hassle, risk, and expense of doing it themselves.
EEaaS (Energy Efficiency as a Service) companies are a new and growing sector of efficiency upgrade specialists that can provide cutting-edge technology and full-time monitoring for almost any QSR operation.
An EEaaS company that specialize in QSRs and restaurant energy efficiency may provide refrigeration monitoring as part of a comprehensive energy management solution that includes interior and exterior LED lighting, multilevel HVAC improvements, and smart water heating.
Budderfly is the leading specialist in QSR energy outsourcing, and more than 4,000 locations of some of the biggest restaurant brands rely on us for comprehensive energy outsourcing.
Our model of energy upgrades and management is effortless and risk-free, and it delivers guaranteed efficiency (and valuable, profit-driving analytics) at zero out-of-pocket cost to you.
To learn more about how refrigeration monitoring and other important energy management systems can be installed, monitored, and maintained in all your locations, contact a Budderfly QSR specialist today.