24% Reduction For KFC In South Africa

Moral Foods, a local franchisee of Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), for the past few months, and in a short time has generated impressive savings for two pilot stores.

Moral Food’s owner, Mr. Rughubeer contacted representative in South Africa, after hearing about the savings the company had achieved for another local business.

Facing increasing energy costs across his estate of 16 successful stores in the KwaZulu Natal region, Mr. Rughubeer was keen to get a better understanding of the energy hotspots within his business and identify opportunities for savings.

Local South Africa representative performed a full site audit and set about installing R-T EMS (Real-Time Energy Management System) state of the art, real-time energy monitoring solution, within the Inanda and Phoenix stores that would act as a pilot for a wider store roll out.

The data collected through R-T EMS allowed to perform a detailed analysis of the energy consumption within those stores, allowing for no or low-cost savings to be identified and presented to Mr. Rughubeer.

“Using data collected in real-time from R-T EMS’s sophisticated analytical software I was amazed how quickly potential areas of savings were identified. Within the first month we were saving Mr. Rughubeer a substantial amount of money.” Says Local South African representative.

Key to those energy reductions was a process called ‘Daily Start Up Synchronisation’ where local team identified patterns in the daily routines and processes at the stores. Using these patterns as a baseline they were able to identify opportunities for reduction and monitor the effects in real-time.

At an equipment level, on-site chillers were fitted with timers and thermostats, eliminating the wasteful legacy system that relied on pressure pads. LED lighting was fitted throughout each store, front and back, including signage.

Over six months KFC locations were able to generate a total of R148,190 (around £8,500) of savings across the two stores’ electric bills, cutting nearly a quarter (24%) of their total monthly electrical consumption. In simple terms, this could be equated to the cost of providing 5,951 Streetwise 2 meals to customers.

However, the energy savings don’t stop there, the Local Representative has been given the green light to extend the pilot to the remaining 13 stores and are already in the process of identifying further reductions across those stores.

The success has opened up doors with other franchisees across the region, with negotiations for a further 150 stores already underway, and the potential to install across the 900 KFC franchises within South Africa in the future.

Moral Foods owner, Mr. Rughubeer says, “We are delighted with the results, they have exceeded our expectations.”