10 Tips for Restaurants on Saving Money, Energy & the Earth

Are you investing your energy resources wisely? The following tips provide ideas for maintaining an energy efficient operation.

Track energy consumption

Tracking your monthly electricity, water, sewer, trash and natural gas consumption is a first step toward managing your impact and monitoring the effectiveness of efficiency improvements. If you’re an independent operator or local chain, get audits from local utilities and municipalities. Many organizations provide free energy, water and waste audits in addition to advice, technical and sometimes financial assistance for upgrades and program development. Take advantage of these free professional services.

Allow for air circulation around refrigerators and freezers

Refrigerators remove heat from inside the box and eject that heat through the coils on the top or bottom of the unit. When you are cleaning around these units, do not push your reach-ins into tight spaces where the heat will build up, forcing the unit to work harder and use more energy.

Defrost food regularly

Develop a frozen food pull schedule to avoid the practice of defrosting food under running hot water. If a two-gallon-per-minute faucet is used forthis purpose one hour every day for a year, the cost may exceed $800. Read the rest of this entry »

LEED Green Building Certification

Green Building Certification – LEED

Green design in buildings has increased rapidly in the last few years due to the increase in energy costs. To help centralize the green building criteria, the non-profit U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) developed core principles for residential and commercial buildings that are designed to lower operating costs, reduce waste, reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, and conserve energy.  The USGBC developed LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a rating system that serves as a third-party certification program. The numeric -point driven program evaluates a building’s total environmental performance. The number of points earned for a project determines the LEED certification level of the building. Buildings, not individual products, attain LEED certification based on the number of credits earned

U.S. Cooler offers several products to assist our customers in meeting the requirements for LEED certification. Read the rest of this entry »

Preventative Maintenance for Refrigeration Systems

Suggested Refrigeration Systems Preventative Maintenance

Refrigeration systems are critical in the foodservice industry. It is very important to provide maintenance on your cooling systems to help prevent them from clogging or breaking down, which could lead to spoiled food, rotten food, etc. The following guidelines are provided from Heatcraft’s Operation & Instruction Manual.   By following these preventive maintenance steps, it does not guarantee your unit will not break down. However, by taking care and maintaining your refrigeration systems your unit is less likely to have problems.

Preventive Maintenance

Unit Coolers

At every six month interval, or sooner if local conditions cause clogging or fouling of air passages through the finned surface, the following items should be checked.

Read the rest of this entry »

Hard to Open Doors and Pressure Differences in Your Walk-in Box

Improper fixes to hard-to-open doors can cause ice and frost build-up, water dripping on
floors, freezing around door seals and unusual icing patterns in and around the refrigeration equipment.

Nature’s Basics

The physical nature of air causes a cooler or freezer to have a negative pressure compared to the
outside air. This is due to the contraction of the air as the temperature drops. The pressure of the air in a
sealed box will decrease by 0.3 psi for every drop in temperature of 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
Note: This negative pressure is not caused by the refrigeration equipment removing air. The evaporator fans just cool the air and push it around the box. They don’t have any exhaust venting or “makeup air” being brought in from the outside (like they do in air conditioning systems).

Check it Yourself

The most dramatic pressure change happens when the door is closed. Warm air that entered a cold
freezer will be cooled within seconds by contact with the ceiling, walls and product. If the average air
temperature quickly drops from 40 to 30 degrees, the pressure drops by 0.3 psi. That’s 43 pounds per square
foot, over 800 pounds of force on a normal size door. The door will be impossible to re-open until the
pressure is equalized.
Note: The bigger the size of the door and the more airtight the box, the more dramatic it will be. Read the rest of this entry »

Walk-in Freezers Used to Heat Water?

At U.S. Cooler, we strive to bring more value to our customers.  One of the ways we accomplish that is by keeping informed on opportunities to improve your bottom line.

Did you know your walk-in coolers and freezers are potentially capable of doing double-duty?  It’s a well kept secret you may wish to consider.  Depending upon your existing (or hopefully new, from U.S. Cooler) equipment, you may be able to save thousands of dollars annually by capturing the heat rejected from air-cooled condensing units and using it to pre-heat hot water. Read the rest of this entry »

R-22 Phase out January 1st, 2010

January 1st is just around the corner. Now is the time to start preparing for the R-22 refrigeration phase out. Starting in 2010, manufacturers can only produce R-22 refrigerant to service existing equipment. All newly manufactured units will use an alternate refrigerant.

New Restaurant Equipment Depreciation Allowance

If you have already purchased restaurant equipment in 2009, or are planning on doing so before the year is up, make sure you get your accountant to take a special 50% depreciation allowance for all equipment that is purchased, installed and used by December 31st.

This tax provision was extended by President Obama’s stimulus bill from 2008, and it provides an excellent benefit for restaurants that need to purchase new equipment but are tight on cash in a struggling economy. Read the rest of this entry »

Storing Fresh and Frozen Foods

The following article comes from Dependable Refrigeration, LLC.

Storage of Fresh Food in the Refrigerator

The air in a fresh food refrigerator is always quite dry. What moisture there is in the refrigerator tends to collect and condense on the evaporator surfaces. Therefore, food containers should be covered and as air tight as possible to keep food moist.

The temperature inside the fresh food cabinet should be kept at 35 to 45 degrees F. Most fresh foods may be kept from three days to a week at the above temperatures. Unfrozen meat and fish should be stored at as close to 32 degrees F as possible. Fruits and vegetables should be cleaned and prepared for the table before being refrigerated.

For Storage of Frozen Food in the Freezer

The air in a food freezer, as in refrigerator, is very dry. Any moisture in the air of the freezer quickly condenses on the evaporator coil surfaces. It is very important, therefore, that all frozen foods be packaged in moisture proof containers. Read the rest of this entry »

Sharpen Your Bill of Lading, Pay Less in Freight

It used to seem like motor carriers would “look the other way” when it came to the way shippers filled out their bill of ladings.  As long as the freight class that went along with the description was “close“ to what they were shipping, the carriers never bothered with it.  However, now there is too much of an extra revenue source for the carriers to ignore these poorly filled out descriptions and have incentivized dock workers to capitalize on shippers who do not fill this out the proper way.

The biggest mistake people make when filling out a bill of lading is they simply put a basic description of the product like “plastic figurines”.  The problem is that plastic figurines are a density item according to the NMFC and can be classified at any class from a 70 to a 400 (which is a difference of about 250% in price).

Without a classification number, the carriers have every right to bill out at a class 400 if “plastic figurines” is all they are given.  The proper way to describe this item on a bill of lading is to write a description which includes the NMFC issued number.  This is a perfect way to describe this item “Plastic Articles, NMFC #157320 Sub 8, Class 85.”

Elizabeth LaFleur, freight auditor for Logistics Management, Inc., says shippers will cut down on a lot of headaches if they followed this simple process.  LaFleur says, “When a carrier see’s a poor description, they red flag it and can classify it at a much higher class.  If the description on the bill of lading is vague, a lot of times there is nothing that can be done to fight it.  However, if the item number is on the bill of lading then there, is no problem.”

Not only can this be a hassle, the cost can be significant to a shipper.  The way it is nowadays in the freight world is if a shipper does not fill out their bill of lading accurately they get nailed not only with the difference in the freight class but also with a “Weight & Inspection” fee which can be as high as $30.00.

What a Bill of Lading Should NOT Look Like

Recently I visited a prospect that was getting overwhelmed with Weight & Inspections from carriers.  They pulled their bill of ladings for me and on them was the description for “tools”.  There was two problems with this description.  First, “tools” is too vague of a description and second, they were actually shipping drive shafts and other engine parts for race cars.

Read the rest of this entry »

Operating Cost for Walk-in Coolers and Freezers

Before purchasing your walk-in, you may be wondering how much it will cost to operate your walk-in.

To give you a rough estimate of how much it cost to operate a walk-in cooler or freezer, using the national average of 11.89 cents per kilowatt, look at the chart below.

*These numbers were figured using the $.0999 kilowatt hour cost. According to the Energy Information Administration this is the average cost in the United States for commercial electricity.

This chart was created using several assumptions that can affect your actual operating cost.

1. The type of insulation in the walk-in.
2. Efficiency of the refrigeration system.
3. Inside and outside temperature of walk-in.
4. Where the walk-in is located.
5. The temperature and the weight of the product entering the walk-in.
6. How often the door is opened.
7. The age of the walk-in.
8. Cost of electricity.

This is just to name a few.  If you would like to be more accurate using your electric rate, follow the instructions below. Read the rest of this entry »