The third largest Pizza Hut franchisee in the country, the American West Restaurant Group (AWRG), is on track to achieve a significant slice of energy savings thanks to an innovative IoT approach to energy management.
EcoEnergy Insights developed a customized program for hundreds of AWRG’s restaurants in California and Utah that integrates buildings across borders, allowing AWRG to save money and help the environment. EcoEnergy Insights is a provider of Internet of Things (IoT) and analytics-driven business outcome services.
In 2015, AWRG set a goal to reduce average monthly energy usage by 15%. EcoEnergy Insights helped to meet that in the first year-and-a-half across the initial eight restaurants. In fact, they achieved an average reduction as high as 18% in some months, which prompted AWRG to add hundreds more Pizza Hut restaurants. The strong results caught the attention of the judges at the 2018 Environmental Leader & Energy Manager Conference (ELEMCON) who chose EcoEnergy Insights for the 2018 Environmental Leader Top Project of the Year Award.
“We were convinced that the answer was in advanced analytics, not in retrofitting, as in, modifications to existing restaurants that may improve energy efficiency or decrease energy demand,” said Jerry Ardizzone, president, AWRG.
Using the intelligent CORTIX AI and IoT platform, EcoEnergy Insights was able to deploy a three-pronged energy site control strategy at each restaurant. This provided immediate results while laying a foundation for year-on-year savings as well as enabling data-driven decision-making. The restaurants were also connected to EcoEnergy Insights’ Command Center, which allowed continuous benchmarking and raised the network-wide efficiency bar.
In all, AWRG will experience up to 18% of a reduction in average monthly energy usage and $2 million in savings expected over the next 5 years for 250 Pizza Hut restaurants, which amounts to about 15,000 metric tons of CO2 saved in the process.
