At Red Robin, we continue to look at how we can make a difference in our communities through practices
that recycle, reduce and reuse resources.
For example, through our recent switch to energy-efficient LED lighting in our company-owned restaurants, we’re
reducing energy consumption. Our LED lighting program alone is expected to save more than 5 ½ million kilowatt
hours of electricity every year. In terms of the impact on our environment, this is roughly equal
to:
- Planting 923 acres of trees
- Removing 4,060 metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually
- Taking 744 cars off the road for a year
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In addition, our solar power program is harvesting the power of the sun and feeding electricity back
to the electric utility grid using rooftop solar panels. Red Robin currently is piloting solar panels at three of our Colorado restaurants. While our pilot
is in its early stages, we already are able to contribute to lower demand for electric power generation from local
power plants and help reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions.
We’re also providing our restaurant teams with equipment and training that helps them manage energy usage
and reduce consumption, such as practicing the gradual power-up of equipment at opening time and smart management
of our power usage both during and after operating hours. Wherever we can, we install high-efficiency heating,
air conditioning, refrigeration and fryers.
Red Robin also has a number of initiatives underway to promote recycling and reduce waste including the following:
- Phasing out paper payroll checks to eliminate the paper, energy, ink and transportation associated with more
than 400,000 payroll checks every year
- Migrating vendors to electronic funds transfer to reduce paper usage even more
- Reducing water consumption with lower-usage fixtures at all new restaurants
- Working with suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging materials
- Red Robin Home Office program to recycle paper; cardboard; glass, plastic, steel and aluminum containers; and other office
waste
- Recycling fryer oil at roughly two-thirds of our 300 company-owned restaurants –and keeping the used fryer
oil at 100% of our restaurants out of the waste stream
- Testing a reusable kids cup to eliminate plastic usage and waste
We know we can do more to promote practices that are good for the environment, so we formed the Red Robin Green
Team to help identify more ways we can make a difference in our communities. We’ll keep you posted on our progress
through future updates on our web site.