We are pleased to find that two popular United States chain restaurants have recently decided to retrofit their restaurants with LEDs. LED lamps help improve the appearance of food and highlight decorations around the restaurant. They also save money by consuming less power than other fixtures and can lower the power consumed by the air conditioning because they don’t give off heat. LEDs can also illuminate outdoor signs.
Chili’s, an American Tex-Mex cuisine restaurant, is installing 125,000 LED lamps in the interior and exterior of all 827 of its corporate restaurants. Brinker International, parent company of Chili’s and Maggiano’s restaurants, purchased the new lighting manufactured with Cree XLamp LEDs from Eco-story LED Lighting Solutions. According to LEDs Magazine, “Eco-story claims this will be ‘the largest U.S. roll-out of LED lamp technology to date.’” They are replacing 30-50 watt lamps with 4.9-watt LED MR16s and 60-watt PAR20 and PAR30 lamps with 6-watt LEDs. Other indoor and outdoor lamps were also replaced. Brinker’s savings from this installation are almost unbelievable! It calculated each restaurant would save $87.00 per week, totaling to $3.7 million each year! Bill Stauffer, co-founder of Eco-story, said the appearance and lighting quality in Chili’s has greatly improved with the new LEDs.
Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar, who call themselves “the world’s largest casual dining restaurant,” hired LED Saving Solutions to install its first retrofit of its restaurants in Newtown, Pennsylvania. They chose lights that gave off similar light to what they had installed previously to keep the mood and dining experience the same. LED Savings Solutions’ Lighting Audit and Savings Report analyzed the new lighting and found that the restaurant will save $150,000 in energy costs and reduce CO2 emissions by 1.8 million pounds. If all 2,000 Applebee’s restaurants in the chain switched to LEDs, they would save a combined total of $1.5 million per month, $18 million per year, and $300 million over the lifetime of the lamps!
With these kinds of projected savings, we hope to see more restaurant LED retrofits!
