The Energy Bill Nobody Reads

The energy bill is one of the largest fixed costs in a night venue and one of the least examined.

It arrives, it gets paid, and nobody reads it — partly because it is genuinely hard to read, and partly because it feels like weather: something that happens to you rather than something you decide.

Some of it is weather. A meaningful share is decisions.

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The short version

Cooling and refrigeration dominate. Lighting is usually smaller than people assume
The standing charge is fixed cost — check it before the unit rate
Half the waste is equipment running when the room is empty
Four changes pay back inside a season, and none of them need capital
Read one bill properly, once. Most operators never have

⚠️ The last line is not a criticism. Bills are written to be paid, not understood. One careful read, once a year, is enough.

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One — where it actually goes

Rough shape for a typical night venue:

Use	Share	Notes
Refrigeration and cellar cooling	Large	Runs 24 hours whether you trade or not
Air conditioning / heating	Large, seasonal	Follows occupancy and the weather
Kitchen equipment	Varies	Depends heavily on the offer
Lighting	Moderate	Frequently over-estimated by operators
Everything else	Small	Sound, tills, terminals, back office

⚠️ The first row is the one to look at first, because it runs on days you are closed. A cooling problem costs you seven days a week and shows up as a bill you assume is normal.

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Two — read the bill once, properly

The three numbers that matter

Standing charge …a fixed daily amount. Paid whether you open or not
Unit rate …the price per unit consumed
Consumption …how much you actually used

⚠️ Operators shop the unit rate and ignore the standing charge, which on a multi-meter site can be a substantial fixed cost that no amount of switching things off will reduce.

Check how many meters you are paying a standing charge on. Venues with an old cellar meter, a disused unit, or a legacy supply frequently pay for meters that serve nothing.

Compare like with like

Same month last year, not last month
Degree-adjusted if you can — a hot August is not a management failure
Per trading hour, if your hours changed

⚠️ Month-on-month comparison in a seasonal business produces nonsense and then produces action based on nonsense.

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Three — the four changes that pay back in a season

One: stop cooling an empty room

Air conditioning running after close
Cellar door propped open during a delivery, all evening
Kitchen equipment on from 16:00 for a 20:00 service

⚠️ This is the largest single category of waste and it costs nothing to fix — it is a closing-list item and a named owner, not an investment.

Two: clean the condensers

The same fifteen-minute job that prevents failure also cuts consumption substantially. A dirty condenser makes the compressor work harder every hour of every day.

⇒ Covered in more detail in The Maintenance You Only Do When It Breaks.

Three: fix the door seals

Cellar and fridge seals perish quietly. A visible gap is months of avoidable consumption, and the part is trivial.

Four: set the thermostats deliberately

⚠️ Most venues have never set them — they were set once by an installer and adjusted in panic since. A degree or two, decided rather than inherited, is real money across a year and is invisible to guests.

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Four — what to be sceptical about

Lighting replacement pitched on dramatic savings. ⚠️ Usually worth doing eventually, but lighting is rarely the biggest line — check your own split before spending capital on it.

Tariff switching as the whole answer. Useful, and it does nothing about consumption. Both, in that order: consumption first, because it persists across suppliers.

Anything sold on a payback calculated from someone else's venue. ⚠️ Ask for the assumptions and check them against your own bill.

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Five — the number to keep

Consumption per trading hour, monthly.

Total consumption ÷ hours actually open

⇒ This survives changes in opening hours, which raw totals do not.

⚠️ If it rises while trading hours are flat, something is running that should not be — and that is a finding you can act on the same week, rather than a bill you argue with three months later.

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Three to hold

Consumption per trading hour, monthly. The one that means something.

Number of meters with a standing charge. ⚠️ Check once. Occasionally free money.

Year-on-year for the same month. The only fair comparison in a seasonal business.

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Where the record has to sit

Consumption per trading hour requires trading hours to be recorded in a form you can total — which sounds obvious and is frequently the missing half. Where opening hours vary by season or by day and live only in a rota that gets replaced weekly, the denominator does not exist and the metric cannot be built.

tasteck keeps trading records and shift history in one place, so the hours side of that calculation is available rather than reconstructed.

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Related reading

• The Maintenance You Only Do When It Breaks
• Nightclub KPI Guide: 12 Metrics Every Operator Must Track
• Your Quietest Hour
• Pricing

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Some of the bill is the weather. The rest is equipment running in an empty room, and nobody has looked at it because the bill was written to be paid rather than read.