Hospitality utility procurement built around service hours, seasonality and tenancy churn.
Independent consultancy for restaurants, gastropubs, bar groups, late-night venues and food-led hospitality operators. Gas-fired ranges, extraction running through service, walk-in refrigeration that never sleeps, and a tenant base that changes faster than any contract — all of it sits on top of an energy and water market that punishes inattention. We sit on your side of the table.
Restaurants and pubs carry a utility profile that almost no other commercial sector replicates. Gas demand is concentrated in a narrow service window but is intense within it, with combi-ovens, gas ranges, salamanders and pass-through grills all firing during prep and service. Electricity demand has a continuous overnight floor — walk-in fridges, freezers, ice machines, cellar cooling and ambient lighting — and a sharp afternoon ramp into evening service driven by extraction, dishwashers, induction and EPOS infrastructure. Water consumption is dominated by kitchen and bar use, and the wastewater profile carries enough fats, oils and grease to put almost every operator inside the trade effluent regime under Section 118 of the Water Industry Act.
Our role as an independent UK utility consultancy is to take that complexity off the operations director, the area manager and the bookkeeper. We audit the contracts you already hold, recover overcharges where they exist, tender renewals across the whole UK B2B market with transparent commission disclosure, and keep one consolidated record of every meter, MPAN, MPRN and SPID across the estate. We do not hold ourselves out as an EHO consultancy, a regulated water hygiene advisor or a kitchen-extraction designer — those remain your in-house or specialist responsibilities. We sit alongside them.
Common issues we see in restaurant and pub estates
- Out-of-contract or deemed gas supply following a change of tenancy, lease assignment or operator handover, with no formal change-of-tenancy lodged.
- Mogden formula effluent rates set against a generic high-strength sectoral assumption rather than actual sampled discharge composition.
- Standard-rate CCL applied across the bill with no consideration of de minimis low-use exemptions on outhouses, sheds or seasonal cabins.
- Walk-in refrigeration baseload running 24/7 against a contract priced as if the site shut down between service periods.
- EV charger capacity uplifts retained at the original kVA level for years after installation, despite minimal real-world charger utilisation.
- Seasonal trading sites (beer gardens, summer terraces, winter Christmas markets) on annualised AQ figures that misrepresent actual demand to suppliers.
What we look at on a typical restaurant or pub audit
The audit is free and runs against twelve months of invoices and a current lease or tenancy schedule. Findings are returned in writing, typically within 48 working hours.
- 01Validation of every MPAN, MPRN and SPID against the central industry database for the registered occupier and start date, with particular attention to recent tenancy changes.
- 02Check for any deemed, out-of-contract or rollover unit rate against current market benchmarks for comparable HH and NHH hospitality profiles.
- 03Service-window load profile review: gas burn during service hours versus standing charge and capacity allocation.
- 04Walk-in refrigeration and ice-machine baseload reconciliation against overnight half-hourly data where available.
- 05Trade effluent: presence and currency of consent under Section 118, Mogden formula coefficients challenged against actual sampled data where the consent allows.
- 06Surface-water drainage: confirmation of impermeable area against current site plan, including beer gardens, terraces and converted yards.
- 07CCL declaration accuracy and VAT certificate alignment per meter, including any de minimis low-use outbuildings.
- 08Microbusiness status test against the three Ofgem thresholds, with documented entitlement to back-billing protections and renewal-window notification.
- 09EV charger capacity review: kVA allocation, peak coincidence with service hours, and headroom available for downward renegotiation.
- 10Commission disclosure: confirmation in writing of any TPI commission earned on the incumbent contract.
Procurement considerations specific to food-led hospitality
Tenancy churn is the variable that most generic procurement tools fail to handle. A pub group with a ten-site estate may see two or three sites change tenant or operator inside a twelve-month period, and each handover is a potential deemed-rate trigger if the change is not formally novated within days. We build a tenancy event calendar into the procurement file and flag every meter ninety days before its anniversary, regardless of who is managing the site at the time. The cost of getting this wrong is generally far larger than any saving available from a marginal contract decision.
Seasonal trading variability is the second variable. A coastal restaurant with a summer-heavy load curve and a winter trough is misrepresented by an annualised AQ figure, and suppliers tend to price defensively against the uncertainty. We tender with a true monthly consumption schedule, segment any winter shutdown weeks honestly, and where the volume is large enough, consider a basket or flexible procurement that smooths peak-day exposure. For most single-site operators a properly priced fixed term remains the right answer.
REGO-backed renewable supply is increasingly a procurement criterion for operators with sustainability claims on the menu, in marketing or in food-service framework agreements. We model the REGO premium honestly and only recommend it where the audit trail is robust enough to use in public-facing claims. Unbundled certificates that meet the letter of the rule but cannot be defended in a press challenge are not, in our view, the right tool for a hospitality brand.
Regulations that hit restaurant and pub utility files hardest
Deemed contract regime
After a tenancy assignment, lease change or operator handover the supply defaults to deemed rates unless formally novated. These rates are not capped in the non-domestic market and are routinely the single largest avoidable cost in the sector.
Water Industry Act 1991, Section 118
Trade effluent consent regime. Kitchens with grease traps, fryer-oil disposal and bar discharge almost always fall within scope, and the Mogden formula coefficients can be challenged against sampled data.
Climate Change Levy
Applied at the standard non-domestic rate to electricity and gas. There is no Climate Change Agreement available to mainstream restaurants or pubs — the lever is on demand-side efficiency, not on the levy itself.
Microbusiness protections
Ofgem rules give microbusinesses extended back-billing protection, written renewal notification windows, and an Energy Ombudsman escalation path. Most small operators meet at least one of the three thresholds without realising it.
TCR / DCP161 capacity charges
The Targeted Charging Review reshaped DUoS recovery, and DCP161 introduced excess-capacity penalties for HH sites exceeding their Available Capacity. Both can bite after EV-charger or kitchen-refit projects.
Hospitality operator questions, answered straight.
We are an independent UK utility consultancy aligned with the Ofgem TPI Code of Practice principles. Whole-of-market procurement, transparent commission disclosure, and one consolidated record across your estate.
Request an estate audit- This is the single most common finding in food-led hospitality. When a tenancy or lease changes hands without a formal change-of-tenancy notice and a fresh contract, the supply defaults to a deemed contract — and deemed unit rates on non-domestic gas are not capped, so they sit far above tendered prices. The first step is to evidence the change of occupier with the date of completion, your lease or tenancy agreement, and an opening meter read. We then formally novate every meter onto your trading entity, dispute any overlap with the predecessor, and tender the renewal. Where a back-bill on a microbusiness account exceeds twelve months without prior notice, the Standard Licence Conditions back-billing rules generally apply in your favour.
Send us one bill. We'll send back every overcharge — and the cheapest legitimate replacement.
Whether you run a Mayfair restaurant group or rent a flat in Salford, the audit is the same and the fee is the same: nothing, unless we save you money.