Quick Serve, Long View

Quick-serve restaurants don’t generally leap to mind when consumers think of businesses that are going green. The global leader in foods not served in a bun has a menu of plans designed to change that perception, however.

Yum! Brands, parent company of the KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurant brands, recently opened its first “green” restaurant and detailed its sustainability efforts and plans in its initial corporate social responsibility report.

Based in Louisville, Ky., Yum! Brands has nearly 36,000 eateries in 110 countries and continues to open four locations daily outside of the United States, making it one of the largest retail developers in the world.

“Our restaurants around the globe have been actively engaged in focusing on efficiencies and reductions, many in environmental efforts related to equipment, energy usage and lighting,” says Karen Sherman, senior director of corporate social responsibility for Yum! Brands. “We decided, with the launch of our first corporate responsibility report, to really look at what we had done over the last 10-plus years — the achievements across the globe and the opportunities.”

The goal, she says, “is to bring the efficiencies of cost and environmental impact together rather than thinking of them separately.”

Yum! Brands had an impressive green story to tell even before issuing its first corporate social responsibility (CSR) report. Over the past two years, its domestic company-owned restaurants achieved total annualized savings of 60,000 metric tons of CO2, reducing energy costs by $17 million. This translates to the equivalent of taking 10,700 cars off the road or eliminating the energy use of 4,400 households.

Many of the efficiency gains stem from retrofitting HVAC systems, ovens and lighting. “We’re focusing on using Energy Star equipment and more environmentally-friendly equipment,” Sherman says.

Yum! established the Environmental Leadership Council, a partnership of the company’s engineering, packaging, architecture, management and CSR groups, in 2006. The council establishes environmental strategies for Yum! and identifies opportunities in areas such as equipment retrofits, energy management and behavioral changes related to energy use. The council then designs, tests and deploys programs to grab these opportunities.

The company’s Energy Procurement Team considers buying green power (solar, geothermal, wind) wherever possible. Yum! recently opened its first restaurant to meet LEED certification standards. The Northampton, Mass., KFC/Taco Bell runs on purchased green power. “In the U.K., we have restaurants that are purchasing green power to cover about 20 percent of their power, and our operators in China are looking at this as well,” Sherman says.

Yum! Brands currently recycles waste at 62 percent of its U.S. restaurants. “Most is done in the back-of-house,” Sherman says. Cooking oil is being recycled at all Yum! restaurants and converted into biofuel or glycerin for personal hygiene products.

Biodiesel pioneer
Sol Yoshida, a KFC franchisee in Japan, has been recycling cooking oil for conversion to biodiesel in 60 of his restaurants for more than 10 years and his store in Nagano City is believed to be the world’s first biodiesel-powered restaurant. Yum! Brands picked Yoshida’s brain to learn how he recycles and whether his methods might be adaptable to U.S. operations. “We revere him as someone who is not only paving the way for KFC and Yum! Restaurants, but also for the quick-serve restaurant category,” Sherman says.

Other recycling efforts focus on cardboard or other packaging. “We’re looking at every piece of packaging such as pizza boxes and asking, ‘What is the impact of this one box?’ We’re not only taking a holistic view but conducting an individual piece examination.” Yum! also is exploring the composting of restaurant waste; it is currently being done in Northampton.

Following the advice of sustainability and restaurant experts, Yum! created a “green transformation” plan for the Northampton unit. “We look to our first green restaurant as being a next-generation design for our U.S. and global operations,” Sherman says.

Air, water, wood, light
There are four key areas to the design. The carbon footprint is reduced by using solar energy to preheat fresh air entering the building, purchasing renewable energy credits and utilizing more energy-efficient kitchen and building equipment. Salvaged rainwater irrigates and waters plants, and plumbing fixtures with reduced water-consumption rates were utilized.

Building materials with recycled content and sustainably harvested wood were used in construction, and lighting efficiency was enhanced through the use of sunlight in the restaurant and LEDs to brighten parking areas and signs.

A number of the features at the Northampton unit were designed with associates in mind, including increasing the amount of natural light via skylights, a less labor-intensive oil recovery and distribution system and an enhanced employee lounge.

Yum! Brands has extensive plans for a green future. For example, it plans to reduce energy usage by 12 percent in domestic company-owned restaurants by next year.

“Our team is looking at the next iteration of the green building,” Sherman says. “We also have some new green building processes going on in and outside the U.S. We are heavily looking at this next generation of restaurants.”

The company plans to issue CSR reports every two years; the next one is due in 2010.