The Guvnor 09/03/2006

We all, including our staff teams, need to take a hard look at the internal and external areas of our premises. You will then soon realise that we can all make very simple adjustments to the way we go about our daily business to help save energy.

Many of us operate in less than modern premises. One of my pubs, the Garsdale near Bury, was a family home 25 years ago. When it was converted to a pub I guess energy conservation was the last thing on the minds of the brewery.

So we, as operators, are left with legacies such as radiators being positioned directly under single-glazed soft-wood window frames.

How many pubs do we visit that have brass six-arm light fittings that carry six 60 watt bulbs in them?

They may look nice, but they are costing an absolute fortune to run. Change the bulbs to 40 watt.

Variable costs such as water, gas and electric are controllable costs that are directly linked to the profitability of our business. To survive we must use simple measures to control these costs, so take a look at pages 26 and 27 of last week's Money section in the MA for some excellent advice.

We took over a second pub in May last year and like many rural locations we operate with LPG, which incidentally is approximately 50% more expensive than normal gas.

The other disadvantage is that you purchase the gas prior to consumption, therefore it is carried as stock.

It costs us approximately £1,400 to fill every four to five weeks depending on use, but in our first three months the full tank would only last three weeks.

So, we have had to make simple adjustments to our heating system such as hot water being stored and maintained at 60°C rather than 80°C as it used to be.

Staff would use cold water to cool our hot water down, which had a direct consequence on another controllable cost - metered water.

Following the early morning clean our lights are turned on five minutes before we open, our grill is not fired up until we get our first "check on", extraction fans are turned down rather than running at full speed and external lighting, which we changed to sodium, is controlled by time devices, therefore only being used when needed.

I share the same view as many within our industry, namely we cannot continue to operate as we always have done. Gone are the days where we can increase prices to compensate for ever-increasing costs, so we must continue to look internally at the costs we can control and make direct savings from better management of these resources.