Business Energy for Canteens

Largely on readiness rather than cooking. In monitored commercial kitchens bain maries accounted for 9% of electricity and heat lamps a further 7%, which is holding food at temperature rather than preparing it, and refrigeration took 41% running continuously. Tightening when holding equipment comes on and goes off is usually the quickest available saving.

Refrigeration, which catches most operators out. Monitoring of fourteen UK commercial kitchens found refrigeration took 41% of kitchen electricity, more than any single piece of cooking equipment, because it runs every hour of the year while cooking happens in bursts. Cooking took the other 59%, led by fryers at 14%, combination ovens at 12% and grills at 12%.

Because the hour is the smallest part of the operation. Preparation, holding, ventilation and refrigeration run across the whole day around it, and most of your consumption is incurred outside the service window. That is normal for a canteen, and it is also why schedules matter more here than equipment choice.

Less than you would hope, unless someone acts on it. Refrigeration keeps running, standing charges apply every day, and plant left on its normal schedule will heat and ventilate an empty kitchen. Closure periods are worth planning for deliberately: consolidating stock into fewer chillers and shutting the rest down is the obvious win.

Only if you hold the contract. Where a canteen sits inside a larger site and is sub-metered or recharged, the supply belongs to the landlord or host organisation and they are the ones who can switch it. We will tell you plainly which position you are in before going any further.

20%, in almost every case, plus the Climate Change Levy, because this is business premises. The reduced 5% rate applies only at very low consumption, which a working kitchen will exceed comfortably. We confirm your position as part of the comparison rather than leaving you to find out from the first bill.

If peak demand reaches 100kW it is a legal requirement. Plenty of kitchens get there once you add refrigeration, cooking and extraction together. It is worth having rather than merely tolerating: half-hourly data lets a supplier price the load you actually have instead of an assumed profile.

Yes. Multiple sites can move onto one supplier with a single renewal date, even where the current contracts all expire at different times. It cuts the admin and the combined volume usually sharpens the rate.

Around four to six weeks from agreement to go-live, with no interruption to supply and nothing to change in the kitchen.