KFC has a project team that focuses specifically on the business’s environmental strategy – they have introduced around 10 different projects over the past two years and there are more to come. 

Key initiatives revolve around energy efficiency and waste reduction, both of which enable business to save on costs. 

The green store

Perhaps most notable is the brand’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified restaurant in East Maitland, New South Wales.

LEED is a voluntary, consensus-based, market­ driven program that provides global third-party verification of green buildings, and there are currently nine LEED KFC stores across the world.

“It’s our green store – all the waste there is recycled – we’ve got a special waste system there which basically recycles everything from the food and cardboard to bottles and cans,” he says.

“It uses 35 percent less water, 16 percent less energy and 93 percent of the construction materials are recycled.”

The store also includes a series of water-saving measures including water efficient landscaping, tankless water heaters and water conservation systems for taps, bathrooms and urinals, and Clark says additional green stores are on the horizon.

“We are planning to do more lead certified stores in the future – they should be cheaper to run at really not much extra in capital cost,” he explains.

Recycling

KFC spent between four and five years developing its recycling bins for stores, which were introduced in 2011.

“We’re the first QSR to do front of house bottle and can recycling – they allow customers to separate waste from bottles and cans,” he explains. 

The bins have been installed in 185 KFC stores, and Clark says they will continue to roll them out across the system.

“The bins are often built into the wall meaning there is a capital cost involved, so we put the new bins in as we build and upgrade each store, which happens every five years.

“We’ve worked with the Australian Packaging Covenant and Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) and we’ve got some government grants to help us roll them out,” Clark adds.

KFC also recycles all of the cardboard boxes it receives back of house. “The cardboard back of house recycling made economic sense straight away because the landfill levy is much higher for general waste versus recycling.”

Clark explains the savings have been quite significant overall. “We’ve saved around 3,000 tonnes worth of cardboard in the last year, and we’ve saved around 400 tonnes of bottles and cans from going to landfill,” he says.

Energy-efficient lighting

Almost all of KFC’s company-owned stores now have LED lights, and Clark says the business has enjoyed substantial savings as a result of the changeover.

“The LED lights save about 70 percent of the cost of electricity, they are about 70 percent more efficient than the previous lights we used and they last about five years as long

KFC is also looking at switching its car park lighting to LED. “They use about 70 percent less power than the current halo lights and last about three times as long,” says Clark.

Kitchen ventilation technology

Stores’ extraction hoods, which sit above the fryers, are also undergoing a bit of a redesign – the aim is to adjust the amount of air they suck out based on how many cookers are in operation. 

“That saves a lot of money on electricity because it makes the air conditioners work more efficiently – they aren’t extracting all that air that’s just been cooled down.

“We’re getting savings of $3,000 or $4,000 in electricity per store for those, which equates to around 10 percent of the electricity costs of the whole store,” Clark says.

“While it’s not a small investment – about $5000 to $10,000 a store – we’re rolling it out across the entire network because we can see that short payback.”

COST FREE INITIATIVES

KFC also educates its store managers and franchisees about environmentally friendly behaviours, which are generally simple and straightforward and can be adopted at no cost.  

“Some of them are just as simple as turning the air conditioning set point from 25 degrees to 20 degrees – you can actually make money from day one when you do that,” Clark says.

The company’s electricity provider has an electricity monitoring system that allows each store to track its energy usage.

“Stores can look at what they did the previous day by hour and work out how much electricity they’ve used – they can see how much electricity they use at their peak, if they’ve forgotten to turn something off at night and so on.

“Giving store owners and managers that information has made a big difference because they can actually understand their usage as opposed to getting a bill in the mail two months later – it gives them really powerful information to help manage their electricity usage,” he adds.

KFC also provides its franchisees and store managers with energy saving tips around how and when to use electricity.

“We cover things like starting up the store – if store managers or franchisees turn all the equipment on at the same time you get a spike in demand, which throws the store’s power bill out, so really staggering the start times and doing the right things in the right order does make a big difference to the energy use in store, and that’s something the store can control,” Clark explains.