Taking a Bite out of Energy Costs
Restaurants waste more energy than a typical business—as much as $8 billion in energy every year. ThinkFoodGroup is taking steps to change that at Zaytinya.
In an effort to be more energy-efficient, we enlisted the help of DCSEU to upgrade our lighting. Not only has this process saved the restaurant money, it’s also better for the environment, and we couldn’t be more pleased with the results.
ThinkFoodGroup (TFG), the company behind José Andrés restaurants, hotels, and philanthropy, operates 8 restaurants in the District—a number that is growing with the city’s recent restaurant boom. One of the most recognizable TFG establishments is Zaytinya, a restaurant serving Greek and Mediterranean cuisine and ranking consistently as a top DC dining destination since it opened in 2002.
In 2015, the company asked the DCSEU for help in upgrading lighting at the restaurant in both the front of the house and the back of the house. The DCSEU offered the restaurant rebates to replace old, inefficient lighting with efficient LED fixtures. Zaytinya’s lighting upgrade will save the restaurant more than $8,250 in yearly electric costs. The efficient lighting will also save nearly 77,000 kWh of electricity each year—the equivalent of about seven homes’ electricity use for one year. These upgrades will pay for themselves in less than one year.
