The Mitchells & Butlers group is the leading operator of pubs and restaurants in the UK and has been at the forefront of the industry since 1898. The brands belonging to Mitchells & Butlers are located throughout the UK at more than 1600 individual sites in both city center and country locations - including All Bar One, Toby Carvery, O'Neill's and Harvester to name just a few. The group worked with GE to improve some of its branches’ lighting solution.

The expectation

Dedicated to providing a consistent customer experience, the Mitchells & Butlers estate was looking for an upgrade in its traditional Halogen lighting system without altering the look and feel that customers have come to expect from each of the brands. Due to the vast number of sites undergoing the refurbishment, Mitchells & Butlers also required an energy efficient solution that would generate significant financial savings.

"One of the most important things for us was to ensure that the LED solution would deliver a consistent level of light that would not alter or degrade over time," said Richard Felgate, Head of Energy Management for Mitchells & Butlers. He continued: "Aligned with this, we were also looking for a solution that would help us to reduce our energy costs and associated CO2 load."

The solution

Though they are not very efficient, Halogen lamps are still widely used in hospitality installations as they provide beautiful quality of light that was until recently hard to achieve with new technologies. GE Lighting recommended replacing all of the existing 50W halogen lamps found in the front of house areas of the estate with its energy efficient 7W MR16 LED lamps and 5W LED EnergySmart™ GU10 lamps.

The 7W MR16 range offers a high level of technical performance in the form of a halogen shaped LED lamp. Simple to change as it can be used with the existing ballasts; it offers outstanding performance and 12 times longer life (compared to a standard 50W halogen lamp), ensuring an exceptionally short payback period.

The new generation of dimmable LED Energy Smart™ GU10 lamps provide market leading efficiency and lumen performance - a true replacement for GU10 halogens. The range offers 50W equivalent lamps between 320-360lm, all with a long life of 25,000 hours (L70/B10). The lamps are available in 3 different colour temperatures and 25 or 35 degree beam angles, to fit the application.

In total it was around 130,000 GU10 and MR16 lamps delivered for the 1600 estates across UK.

"On the whole, we chose to convert as many of the 50W halogen fittings across our estates to GE's 5W GU10 LED lamps as possible."- said Richard.

"Prior to the installation, we undertook a thorough trial and evaluation process to evaluate the quality of light emitted by the LED lamps. We found GE's MR16 and GU10 lamps to be the best and most suited to the project in hand, both in terms of the light quality offered and the relatively low cost, when compared to alternatives," he added.

Results and benefits

GE's lighting solution of replacing the Halogen lamps with LED technology generated an impressive 91% saving in CO2 emission & energy use of the lighting systems, coupled with maintenance cost savings of 69% and operational cost savings of 88%. GE's LED lamps also offered long life & high lumen maintenance, providing a solution that does not compromise the look & feel of the pubs and restaurants.

"We're delighted with the LED solution that GE Lighting has provided and incredibly pleased with the impressive three month payback period delivered as a result," continued Richard.

"As we had carried out a thorough trial process prior to our ultimate selection, we were incredibly confident that the solution would be able to deliver as expected – and we were right. We're obviously very pleased to see such a short payback period, due to the scale of our estate. Such significant savings, both in terms of cost and energy, will help us hugely in our bid to reduce unnecessary waste."

Aside from the financial benefits, GE Lighting's products were also able to deliver a consistent look and feel across each individual brand – something that Mitchells & Butlers prides itself on. "Everyone knows what to expect from a Harvester or an All Bar One branch for example and this comes right down to the lighting, which contributes to the overall ambience. The solution from GE has allowed us to ensure that accent, display and overall lighting needs are addressed. Whilst this may seem like a relatively minor point in the grand scheme of things, we think it is incredibly important to ensure our customers know what to expect – a major benefit of using GE's MR16 LED and LED EnergySmart™ GU10 lamps is we can ensure complete consistency," Richard added.

From a maintenance perspective, the MR16 LED and LED EnergySmart™ GU10 lamps can be easily replaced when required – another major benefit when considering the number of Mitchells & Butlers' sites involved.