‘Inn the Bar’ group* of pubs, clubs and restaurants are scattered across the region offering fabulous food menus, drinks and social venues.

Good energy management is key to such hospitality chains, helping to minimise costs, reduce consumption and optimise service delivery across the entire site. Gas, electricity, water and carbon portfolios need to be continually reviewed so that the Group maintain competitive and compliant.

Brownlow Utilities felt that ‘Inn the Bar’ group could realise significant energy improvements and potential savings. The Group’s current gas portfolio was with Eon Energy SME, who unfortunately didn’t offer their clients a common end date for all sites within the estate. The supplier’s current gas rates were also uncompetitive.

The tender process involved assessing the gas market and ensuring that the chosen provider could offer a common end date for all 15 sites. Brownlow Utilities won the tender and secured a 2 year contract with Scottish & Southern Energy with a common end date of 31 December 2017. More importantly, this also resulted in a substantial cost savings against their current gas costs of £18,328!

David Coates, Financial Controller of Wigan Pubs Ltd (t/a Inn the Bar), positively commented on the knowledge, experience and professionalism of Brownlow Utilities;

"We have recently met with and used the services of Stephen Cross at Brownlow Utilities. We are delighted we did as we have saved £18,328 on our gas contracts across our pub portfolio – a saving of 29%! We found Stephen to be very pleasant, genuine and knowledgeable and he ran through the whole process with us explaining how the utilities market and contracts work along with the pricing of our current deal and any potential new contracts.

There was no pressure to sign anything and the end result savings are a welcome boost to our company profits. We would definitely recommend Stephen and Brownlow Utilities; they have delivered great savings on our utilities even when we thought we already had very competitive prices!"

*’ Inn the Bar’ group is the trading name for Wigan Pubs Ltd.

Read more about Inn the Bar Group.