Grocery Chain Looks To Resource Optimization for Cost Savings

Grocery stores are a vital piece of our communities. But they also consume a significant amount of electricity and generate several streams of waste from plastics to organics to cardboard. Even though they may see potential benefits and rewards in implementing sustainability initiatives, as a whole, the industry’s margins are between 1% to 4%, translating to low profits.

With this challenge, most medium-sized or regional chains are solely focused on controlling costs and making sure they don’t go over budget. Key focuses for controlling their costs include: ensuring hours of operations are consistent, budgets are dependable and predictable, visibility into equipment failure is maintained and emerging regulations are managed.

One regional grocery chain understood that by having visibility into their operations, they could monitor their resources (gas, electricity, water and waste) to manage costs more proactively and ensure their equipment was functioning properly. Additionally, many stores - which operate independently - were facing regional regulations around waste management, they wanted a third-party partner that could help manage and monitor all these initiatives as they focused on serving their local communities.

Resource Monitoring and Energy Reporting to Gain Visibility

Already a long-standing partner of ENGIE Impact, the regional grocery chain trusted ENGIE Impact’s teams to leverage their utility and waste data to help create reports that would give them visibility into their usage. The partnership resulted in the following reports and initiatives:

1. Anomaly Management: The energy management team collaborated with site level contacts to analyze bill data and conducted comprehensive financial and resource audits to identify outliers and resolve the issues which typically results in cost savings.
2. Outlier Analysis & Reporting: All sites historical usage and usage intensity are reviewed on monthly basis. Based on that review, one to three sites that seem to have discrepancies are selected and asked to complete a 20-minute questionnaire where the site contacts conduct a quick onsite energy audit. Once the onsite audit is completed, ENGIE Impact’s energy management team provided suggestions on how to improve operations, when equipment should be replaced or maintained and identify the most optimal temperature range and lighting schedule.
3. Waste Optimization: ENGIE Impact’s waste experts worked with the site contacts and helped ensure they have the right size equipment for their various waste streams and the right frequency of service at every location.
4. Monitoring Waste Regulations: The regional grocery chain faced a new regulation that made each county and city responsible for setting up their own organics system. The regulation would take four years to implement, and each jurisdiction had its own set of rules. ENGIE Impact collaborated with all sites in that region and enabled them to better understand what their municipality was looking for, when an organic program needed to be implemented at their sites and recommendations around best practices.

The Benefits of Sustainable Resource Optimization

The partnership allowed the regional grocery chain to gain full visibility into their operations, verify the initiatives they implemented are saving money, monitor equipment and predict when they would need to be replaced or scheduled for maintenance and be ahead of any emerging regulations.

In the last six years, the regional grocery chain has saved time and resources so site leads can focus on more urgent business needs, driving the following results:

With the benefits of these initiatives being reported and monitored, the regional grocery chain can pivot their business strategy if needed, further optimize their operations, and comply with regulations all while saving money and alleviating some of the margin pressure they face.