RPM Pizza, the largest Domino’s franchisee, has 176 stores across five states, making facilities management one of its biggest ongoing challenges. With most of its stores concentrated in Mississippi and Louisiana, the franchisee has always seen energy costs skyrocket during the long, hot summer months.
“In the south, it’s very hot, and our A/C units can get stressed,” says Alan Lovelace, vice president of development, technology, and strategy with RPM Pizza. “Additionally, typically we have three ovens in a store, along with heat racks, and exhausts. Those are our critical pieces of equipment.”
A couple of years ago, RPM Pizza caught a hot tip from a fellow Domino’s franchisee group, that energy costs could be cut with a simple solution: Tune® Filters. The first of its kind, Tune is an electrical filter that reduces harmonic noise within an electrical board to help save on energy usage and costs. Lovelace admits that he was initially skeptical. It sounded too good to be true. He even called it “fishy” sounding.
“Frankly, it didn’t cost as much as other energy-saving items, which made it seem even more fishy,” Lovelace says.
Ultimately, RPM Pizza ran tests at five stores and some of its employees’ homes and found that Tune Filters saved 10 percent in energy costs over the course of 14 months. Emboldened by these results, RPM Pizza rolled out the solution across all 176 of its stores.
“Typically, we like to see an ROI of 1.5 years when we roll out or test something,” Lovelace says. “For example, when we did an outdoor LED lighting test, we found that our ROI was 1.7 years. With Tune, it was less than a year. It’s been a no brainer.”
On top of that, Lovelace considers Tune to be “one of the easiest rollouts” his company has ever implemented. Tune was able to work around the schedule of RPM Pizza’s stores in order to avoid closures.
“The rollout really was smooth,” says Nate Lee, facilities manager at RPM Pizza. “The quality of the product was there, too—Since (we implemented Tune) we haven’t had to replace any of them.”
RPM Pizza isn’t the only franchisee group that has seen these results. Tune has also helped cut energy costs for franchisee groups that own restaurants with quick-service brands like Wendy’s, McDonald’s, KFC, Popeye’s, and Krystal. Franchisee groups and their facility managers love Tune not just because it saves on energy costs, but also because the filters have been shown to reduce maintenance costs as equipment lasts longer when it’s being more properly managed.
“Tune was designed to be maintenance-free, require no ongoing costs, and deliver a low-cost, energy-saving product that is easy to install,” says Jim Owings, chief product officer at Tune Filters. “Even in a worst-case scenario, if it fails, operations in a quick-service restaurant wouldn’t be disrupted.”
Tune also happens to be one of a kind, holding patents for its proprietary technology. So, if franchisees like RPM Pizza are looking to add electrical filters into the mix in order to lower energy costs and protect their equipment, they’ll have to contact Tune.
“Tune is unique,” says Abi Tuiasosopo, director of sales and area business development with Tune. “The ‘competitive’ products are designed to do other things. Nothing on the market is designed to provide the benefits of Tune.”
For more information on saving on your energy costs and prolonging equipment life, visit the Tune website.
By Charlie Pogacar
