Dark kitchen economics
One meter, many kitchens, and a recharge method chosen by the landlord - with no regulated price cap at commercial premises. Cutting the communal energy line is half contractual and half behavioural, and most operators only ever work one of the two levers.
Dark kitchen economics
Because in most shared kitchen facilities the meter and the incentive are in different rooms. One supply feeds the building; the operator sees a recharge line on an invoice, calculated by a method chosen by the landlord. And the protection most tenants assume exists does not: Ofgem's maximum resale price rules, which stop a landlord profiting on energy resold to domestic tenants, do not apply to energy resold for use at commercial premises. What a dark kitchen pays for its share of the supply is whatever the licence agreement says - a contractual matter, not a regulated one.
That single fact reframes the whole problem. Cutting a communal energy bill is only half about using less energy. The other half is contractual: how the building measures, allocates and prices what each unit uses. An operator who works both levers can cut the line substantially; one who works neither is subsidising the heaviest user in the building.
The allocation question
Ask one question of your operator agreement: is the recharge metered or apportioned? An apportioned recharge - split by floor area, by headcount of units, or folded into a service charge - means the tortilla unit running two induction hobs pays the same rate as the fried chicken brand running a bank of fryers twelve hours a day. Equal splits always subsidise the heaviest user, and in a building full of cooklines the spread between lightest and heaviest is enormous.
The fix is submetering. A sub meter on each unit's supply turns the recharge from an argument into a reading, and any meter used for billing needs to be of an approved pattern - MID-approved for new installations - which is worth checking before you accept its numbers. From there the negotiation is about the unit rate: with no maximum resale price protection at commercial premises, the rate you pay is the rate you agreed, so get the landlord's pass-through basis in writing - ideally their actual supplier rate plus a stated, fixed admin fee rather than an unexplained per-kWh figure. The wider question of why communal energy costs run high in dark kitchen facilities is worth understanding before that conversation, because the landlord's own costs - ventilation plant, cold rooms, common areas - are real and have to land somewhere.
The consumption question
More than the invoice suggests. Refrigeration is typically the largest single draw in a kitchen's day - around 41% of daily electricity in UK metering work - and it responds directly to habits: door discipline, loaded-but-not-overloaded cabinets, condenser coils cleaned on schedule and units sited away from the cookline's heat. Behavioural change alone accounts for roughly 70% of the kitchen energy savings available in the same studies, which is another way of saying most of the waste is free to fix: staggered ignition instead of lighting the whole line at opening, holding matched to the menu instead of everything kept hot all day, and a switch-off routine that actually runs.
In a multi-brand unit the same discipline compounds, because several brands sharing one cookline multiply the idle hours if each brand lights its own kit for its own peak. Consolidating menus onto shared equipment, and knowing which equipment quietly wastes energy even when nothing is being cooked, is where a delivery-only kitchen finds savings a restaurant cannot.
The negotiation question
Three clauses do most of the work. A metered recharge, on an approved sub meter, so you pay for what you use. A transparent rate - the landlord's supplier rate passed through, with any admin charge stated as a fixed figure rather than hidden in the per-kWh price. And a right to see the evidence: supplier invoices on request, and meter readings at an agreed frequency. None of these are unusual asks in commercial property; the operators who do not get them are usually the ones who never asked.
Putting it together
In order of effort against return:
Questions
At commercial premises, yes - Ofgem's maximum resale price rules only cap energy resold for domestic use, so a commercial recharge is a contractual matter. That is why the agreement wording matters more than any regulation: negotiate a metered recharge at the landlord's pass-through rate with any admin fee stated separately, and a right to see supplier invoices.
Almost always. Apportioned splits by floor area or unit count subsidise the heaviest user, and cooklines vary enormously in draw. A MID-approved sub meter on your supply turns the recharge into a reading rather than an estimate, gives you the data to find your own waste, and makes every future negotiation about facts.
Phoenix Duct Clean · by the numbers
Grease-loaded communal extraction makes every unit hotter and hungrier. TR19 Grease cleaning restores design airflow, certificated for the facility's records.