Arby’s has identified over $39 million in potential annual energy and water savings through their energy program. Peter Cryan, Senior Director of Equipment & Innovation and Frank Inoa, Director of Engineering for Arby’s sit down with ENGIE Impact to discuss the drivers behind the savings.
Transcript edited for clarity
ENGIE Impact: What improvements has Arby’s implemented over the years to make its kitchens smarter?
Peter Cryan: We now have pieces of equipment connected to a cloud-based system allowing us to monitor equipment temperatures and performance. This also includes data reporting, so we can see what's going on in our restaurants in real-time. We're removing work and saving on labor inefficiencies because we're taking the administrative burdens off of the restaurant manager and automating them. The next phase includes creating a dashboard for all of this information to tie it all together and make it predictive for us. We want to see what our current labor and sales forecasts are and where we need to adjust. Tying that all in with equipment performance, temperature tracking, cooking platforms, and then the predictability for forecasting, that will make all the other work we've done that much smarter.
ENGIE Impact: What success has Arby’s seen from the Smart Irrigation Pilot Program?
Frank Inoa: We reached out to a company to monitor our stores and they saw that in many of our areas, irrigation was being misused. We saw an opportunity and went to a smart irrigation system. When we selected the smart irrigation program, it was monitoring the ground connected to NOAA, for example, for national weather reports, and it netted us about 7 million gallon savings in one year.
ENGIE Impact: How has ENGIE Impacts partnership helped Arby’s be a more sustainable company?
Frank Inoa: When we started with ENGIE, we did not have an energy team. We did not have any clue what energy efficiency meant. We reached out to various companies in the industry and saw that we were already using ENGIE Impact for our bill pay. ENGIE Impact looked at our stores, provided feedback and gave us a short-term and a long-term plan. A lot of the ideas for our initiatives come from ENGIE Impact, but a lot of our ideas are internal as well. In order to validate those ideas, you need a strong third party. When you have the credibility that ENGIE Impact has, it makes a great partnership.
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