The Lighting Change is Anticipated to Save Chili’s $3.7 Million Per Year

Brinker International, parent company of Chili’s Restaurants and Maggiano’s Restaurants, has recently installed Eco-story LED lighting (www.eco-story.com) as part of a re-lamp project in all of its corporate restaurants. The project, which involves installing 125,000 LED lamps in the interior and exterior of all 827 corporate restaurants, will be the largest U.S. roll-out of LED lamp technology to date.

Eco-story, based in Portland, Maine, was selected as the LED vendor because of its strong track record of manufacturing quality interior lighting for restaurants, retail stores and hotels. Eco-story exclusively uses Cree warm white XLamp® LEDs to help achieve the color quality required by casual and fine dining restaurants. Facilities Solutions Group (FSG) out of Dallas, Texas handled the distribution and installation for all the Chili’s stores.

After testing the technology in ten stores, Brinker determined its annual savings would be approximately $87.00 per store, per week, totaling more than $3.7 million per year in savings for the company. In addition to being a money-saver, the LED technology is also improving the look and ambiance of the Chili’s restaurants versus traditional lighting. Eco-story’s products are engineered to emit a warm light instead of the cool effects of traditional LEDs, which cast unsavory bluish colors on food and guests.
“Our team studied LED lights for a long time and tested many makes and models and we feel our stores look better now than before,” said Kevin Falconer, Brinker’s Senior Director of Design.
“This was a huge project with the most important goal of saving money while maintaining or improving light quality over traditional incandescent lamps,” added Bill Stauffer, co-founder of Eco-story. “The Chili’s stores look fantastic and the savings and ROI that Brinker will realize is simply amazing.”

About Eco-story
Eco-story LED Lighting Solutions, based in Portland, Maine, was founded in spring 2007 on the premise that environmental improvements make strong economic sense. Due to improved technology and Eco-story’s high-quality, reverse-engineered product, companies no longer have to compromise quality and color to use LED lighting to save on utility costs. Eco-story’s LED bulbs are superior to traditional lighting bulbs, offering the highest quality of light on the market. Eco-story bulbs contain no mercury or harmful substances and can duplicate current lighting specifications. For more information, visit www.eco-story.com .