Business Energy for Takeaways

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%.

The biggest single cooking cost, yes. Fryers came to 14% of kitchen electricity in monitored kitchens, ahead of combination ovens and grills at 12% each. But cooking as a whole is 59% and refrigeration is 41%, so on a weekly view the chillers are closer to the fryers than most owners would guess.

Because it is charged every day regardless of trade, and a takeaway is a small-consumption site. Where usage is modest the standing charge can outweigh a difference of a penny or two in the unit rate, so comparing on headline rate alone can land you on a worse deal overall. We compare on what you would actually pay.

More than most people expect. In that same study the least efficient kitchen used 118% more electricity per meal than the most efficient, 3.32 kWh against 1.52 kWh. That gap is equipment, settings and habits rather than menu, which means a good part of it is recoverable without changing what you sell.

Sometimes, but it needs checking rather than assuming. A two-rate or time-of-use tariff only pays if enough of your consumption genuinely falls in the cheaper window, and refrigeration running through the night complicates the picture in your favour. The answer comes from your meter data.

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.

Usually it suits this trade. Fixing locks your unit rate and standing charge for the term, which makes a volatile cost predictable when you are already absorbing food inflation and setting menu prices months ahead. We compare fixed terms from one to five years and give a view on timing.

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.

Yes. Renewable tariffs backed by REGO certificates are widely available and now often priced in line with standard ones, so the premium that used to rule them out has largely gone.

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