Domino's Pizza Franchise

In 2011, in conjunction with the New Jersey Clean Energy Program (NJCEP), Domino’s Pizza Team USA initiated an energy-efficiency pilot program at five of their locations in northern New Jersey. One of the areas of their operations they were looking at was their refrigeration. This included walk-in coolers and freezers, as well as their beverage coolers. One of the criteria most important to the decision makers at Team USA was a quick and hassle-free installation of efficiency measures. If the pilot program was successful, they had a desire to roll out the program on a larger scale throughout the restaurant chain.

First and foremost, NRM provided the type of true turnkey installation that Team USA wanted. In the pilot program, NRM implemented their solution with no impact on the five locations’ business operations—the stores didn‘t even need to close during the installation! And the duties were performed by in-house, licensed electricians.

In 2012, after the success of the initial program, Team USA signed up four additional New Jersey locations, and began a program in Maryland with 34 locations. Both NJCEP and Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) offered incentives up to 70% of the total project costs. This meant each of the locations averaged a payback period of less than one year. Since then, the program has extended to a total of 89 Domino Pizza restaurants.

NRM upgraded the refrigeration equipment with high-efficiency retrofits that included smart controls, EC motors, a timed system shutdown button, anti-sweat door heater controls, and on-demand defrost. The controls, which optimize the system’s runtimes based on space conditions and preset, custom cooling requirements, were able to reduce overall operation by as much as 60% in some locations.

Overall, these improvements recoup about 385,000 kWh (or roughly $55,000) annually for Team USA.