Partner Information
Located in Norman, Oklahoma
8500 Sq. Feet
75 Employees
Annual cash savings: $20,000.00
Annual kWh savings: 235,294
Payback period: 36 Months
Twenty thousand dollars can buy a lot of bread. That’s what
Subway franchise owner Steve Kaplan is saving by installing
energy-efficient lighting, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning,
ceiling fans, and ice makers throughout seven Subway locations in
Oklahoma. With these improvements he’s reduced his energy costs by
40 percent and made his restaurants more attractive and comfortable
for customers.
Kaplan, a Partner in EPA’s Green Lights program, credits EPA’s
impartial technical information with helping him to understand how
he could accomplish two goals - better lighting and higher energy
efficiency — without having to become an expert himself.
In addition to maintaining properly lit restaurants, Kaplan
makes his energy-efficient equipment upgrades where he will get a
3-year simple payback or better. Because Kaplan leases the space
for all seven of his Subway franchises, he only upgrades when he
plans to renew a lease that is at least three to five years in
length, ensuring a 3-year payback.
Just the Right Light To Whet Your Appetite
Kaplan changed his stores’ lighting from 40-watt T-12 lamps with
magnetic ballasts to 32-watt T-8 lamps with electronic ballasts. He
says customers think the produce looks fresher and more appealing,
a result of the higher color rendering index of the T-8s he
installed. Subway franchises are required to have a high light
level, and Kaplan’s lighting upgrades maintain this very bright
level even though each fixture was de-lamped from four bulbs to
two.
Customer Comfort Comes First
Keeping his stores comfortable for clients is important for
Kaplan’s business. So, whenever Kaplan has opened a new franchise,
he has installed an energy-efficient air-conditioning unit with
double the capacity of the current unit to suit his cooling needs.
Additionally, when a unit breaks down, Kaplan compares the unit
replacement and repair costs for profitability. When he has to
replace, he buys an energy-efficient unit.
Ceiling fans are another addition to these stores that helps
maintain comfort. They increase energy efficiency in a retail food
service establishment, and they are decorative. Ceiling fans allow
Kaplan to reduce the cooling temperature of his air-conditioning
unit (which runs 365 days a year because of the heat generated by
the kitchen equipment) by three to five degrees.
One particularly heat-generating piece of equipment in the
kitchen is the ice maker. Kaplan chooses one of two options to help
reduce the heat generated from these machines. One is a
water-cooled ice maker that dumps the heat in the form of hot water
down a drain. The other is an air-cooled ice maker that puts the
onus on the air-conditioning unit to cool this additional heated
air. Because utility rates for water and electricity vary at
different store locations, Kaplan installs a water-cooled ice maker
where water is less expensive to use. Where electricity is less
expensive to use, he installs an air-cooled ice maker.
Subway Upgrades Stack Up
In three of his stores, Kaplan replaced electric water heaters
with energy-efficient gas units and received a payback in one year
because of low gas costs. This payback includes the cost to build a
fire-retardant closet and a roof vent necessary for the gas
unit.
In addition to replacing large, energy-consuming equipment in
his stores, Kaplan changes smaller pieces of equipment like
refrigerator and freezer gaskets as needed, so that cold air stays
in and hot air stays out. Except for heavy tint on a high glass
window that Kaplan installed, window film was already in place in
all of the stores to keep the sun’s heat outside.
Although his work for now is complete, Kaplan, who is always on
the lookout for energy-efficient technologies that can save him
money, is exploring the idea of venting the heat from air-cooled
ice makers to the outside to reduce cooling costs.
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