Foodservice Equipment Rebates Program

Commercial foodservice (CFS)—restaurants, institutional kitchens, corporate campus cafes, and catering businesses—operate on thin margins. Although utility costs are up to 20% of overhead, and one of the top controllable costs, few CFS operations participate in energy and water efficiency programs. CFS is a large, underserved segment for utility efficiency programs and represents substantial net energy savings. Foodservice Equipment Rebates (FERs) offers up to $3,000 in instant discounts for qualifying commercial foodservice equipment. Entities who wish to purchase equipment must do so through a participating supplier. Suppliers prevent customers from having to complete paperwork or wait for a rebate check, allowing them to benefit from the discount at the point-of-sale.

• More than 20 participating dealers are enrolled in the program.
• End-use customers receiving an instant rebate include full-service and fast-food restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, school districts, offices, and more.
• Qualified Products List (QPL) includes 22 separate appliance categories with 1,000s of gas and electric models from 100s of manufacturers.
• Contacted more than 300 dealers, manufacturers, and manufacturer representatives.
• Conducted in-person and on-line training for approximately 75 dealer employees.
• More than 4,200 co-branded customer-focused flyers were provided to participating dealers.
• Targeted emails to utility commercial customers have reached 7,600 individuals.
• Program website il-foodservicerebates.com has been viewed more than 1,000 times.
• Participating dealers are reimbursed in under 2 weeks.

Frontier Energy:

• Designed the program alongside GTI, including the implementation and operations manuals and QA/QC procedures.
• Determined eligibility of equipment and defined incentive/rebate levels.
• Created an on-line portal for enrolling dealers as well as the creating, submitting, and tracking of rebate applications.
• Designed the marketing plan and customer targeting protocols and created the program marketing collateral.
• Created a website with information for dealers and customers.
• Conducted targeted outreach to customers, suppliers, and other industry entities.