Duale Industries, a Wendy’s operator for over 30 years, owns and operates Wendy’s restaurants across the Midwest. As energy, labor, and products costs increase, Duale Industries was looking for ways to significantly reduce costs and establish a more automated, profitable, and future-proof operation.

Challenges

Wendy’s restaurants have dozens of critical equipment running around the clock to ensure that the business is ready to serve its customers. Although there are defined run times and standard operating procedures for when equipment should be turned on and off, it is often difficult for General Managers and local teams to follow these schedules strictly as they have many tasks to manage.

Duale was experiencing the following challenges:

• Equipment being turned on too early and left on overnight
• Unnecessarily high energy costs
• Reduction in equipment life due to inconsistent run time
• Losing and running out of product due to equipment failure
• Time consuming and inaccurate manual temperature checks
• Compromised quality due to food being stored at improper temperatures

Each of the challenges identified contributed to excessive energy bills and often required product to be thrown out, costing Duale thousands of dollars.

Duale Industries needed a way to automate their restaurants and processes, including monitoring of critical equipment temperatures and performance.

Solution

To significantly increase profits and address their operational challenges, Duale selected Energybox, a leading IoT automation and solutions company, to deploy their AutoScheduler and SiteHero solutions.

Automation of equipment startup and shutdown with dynamic scheduling.

Energybox installed the AutoScheduler solution in all of Duale’s sites, enabling them to automate startup and shutdown of equipment with dynamic scheduling of key equipment such as their lighting, fryers, and HVAC units among others. With Energybox’s cloud-based platform, Duale is able to set operating schedules for key equipment and verify savings in real-time.

Real-time monitoring of key temperatures and door access.

The SiteHero solution was implemented to prevent product loss and automate manual processes. SiteHero automates operations by using wireless sensors to monitor key temperatures and door access in real-time. A customizable tiered alert and notification system was implemented for all restaurants ena- bling management and staff to become aware of any operational deviations.

Outcome

Energybox solutions were provided to Duale Industries through a solution-as- a-service model, which resulted in an immediate return on investment.

The platform has allowed Duale to automate and remotely manage all of their sites, and support a contactless environment for their customers and staff. Upon implementation of the Energybox solution, Duale accomplished the following:

• Reduced energy consumption across all sites
• Optimized equipment run times and reduced maintenance costs
• Prevented product loss with automated notifications within the first month of installation
• Automated manual temperature checks and processes reducing labor, and improving accuracy
• Obtained real-time insights and benchmarking of equipment performance and energy consumption across all locations

Duale Industries’ objective was to partner with a company that would digitize their operations to address their operational challenges. Working with Energybox ensured they met their goals while allowing their GMs and employees to focus on driving sales and ensuring happy customers.