HOMER, Mich. -- An upgrade of the lighting in all of PS Food Mart's stores in Michigan in showing remarkable return on investment and allowing the 31-store chain something to crow about to consumers.
"We have converted all of our stores over to T8 bulbs from the old T12 bulbs," Dick Folk, president and CEO of Folk Oil, parent company of PS Food Marts, told CSP Daily News in an exclusive interview, "and the payback has been just phenomenal. In some of the instances it's less than a year [return on investment]."
Aiding that quick turnaround is Michigan's incentive [image-nocss] program. In the wake of the 2008 auto-industry collapse that helped propel the state to the top national unemployment rankings, the state began requiring all major utility companies to get at least 10% of their retail electricity sales from renewable sources or energy efficiency by 2015. That translated to a number of rebate incentive programs for homes and businesses that made it possible to Folk to speed up an upgrading program that was already under way.
"We've been doing this for years, it's just this year we spent a tremendous amount of time and effort and money converting all of our exterior lighting over to more energy-efficient lighting, our building soffit lights and out internal lighting," he said.
"In any store that we build now, we have light harvesters that turn lights on and off if not needed," he added. "All of our bathrooms, all of our coolers have motion sensors. So when not being occupied, our back room, our storage areas, the lights go off."
The cold vault--a focal point in PS Food Mart's latest store design--got a makeover as well.
"All of our coolers now have LED lighting," he said. "It really provides a clean light that makes the cans and bottles really stand out."
The ROI on the cold-vault lighting takes a bit longer, he admitted. "The coolers going LED is more like three years, but we think it's worth it."
The changes also help underscore one of PS Food Mart's three promotional messages: great service, clean environment and a fresh cup of coffee.
Homer, Mich.-based Folk Oil Co. Inc. manages 31 retail locations in Southern Michigan and Northern Ohio. Folk Oil currently owns and manages 29 PS Food Mart convenience stores, three car washes, seven Subway franchises, one Denny's Restaurant franchise, 115 Family Restaurant and one Caribou Coffee franchise.
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