Taco Bell says switching to a new "Grill-to-Order" cooking line will end up saving 300 million gallons of water, 200 million kW hours of electricity and 1.2 million therms of gas per year when it's rolled out to 5,600 units by 2010.
Already in 3,000 stores, the new cooking line trades out its steam cabinet and traditional steam table wells for a new electric grill and dry heat wells. Tortillas, formerly heated in the steam cabinet, now will be heated on the grill-to order, of course. And menu ingredients like taco filling will be held in dry heat wells.
The savings were verified in tests performed by the Food Service Technology Center, San Ramon, Calif. "They're equal to about 15 kW hours per cooking line per store," according to FSTC senior engineer David Zabrowski. That translates to about ,900 in savings per store each year, according to Rick Winfree, senior director of engineering at Taco Bell. FER Fortnightly 5.22.08 Edition Delfield is a major supplier of these lines to Taco Bell and worked closely with them to develop the dry heat well technology that makes these lines so efficient and environmentally responsible.
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