Your bill is a baseload, not a trading cost
Walk into an independent food shop at four in the morning and almost everything that costs you money is still running. The multidecks along the wall are lit and cold. The walk-in cold room is cycling. The frozen wall is pulling. Nothing has been sold since eleven the night before, and the meter has not slowed down.
That one fact shapes the bill in a convenience store, an off-licence, a butcher and a farm shop alike. Refrigeration is commonly around half of the electricity in an independent food shop, and can reach 60% where you run long open-fronted chilled displays losing cold air into the shop all day. UK measured studies put refrigeration at roughly a third to a half of total store energy. Either way it runs 168 hours a week, whether the till rang or not.
On top of that sits a 14 to 16 hour trading day: shop, window and canopy lighting, tills, a coffee machine, a bake-off oven, a hot food counter, and an air curtain arguing with an open front door in January. Those loads follow your hours. The refrigeration does not.
Two things follow. You cannot manage this bill by switching things off overnight, because the loads that matter cannot be switched off. And your consumption profile is flat and heavy, which is exactly the shape suppliers price most inconsistently. That is why food shops so often turn out to have been paying the wrong unit rate for years without anything looking obviously wrong on the bill.
The short version
- Refrigeration is commonly around half of your electricity and never stops.
- Because the load is flat, your unit rate moves the bill more than any single piece of kit you could replace.
- Deemed and out-of-contract rates commonly sit 30 to 80% above a negotiated fixed price.
- Businesses that switch with us save 40% on average, typically 30 to 50%, and more if you're on out-of-contract or deemed rates. See how we estimate.
Where the money goes, load by load
These are the loads that make up an independent food shop's electricity, priced at 25p per kWh. The ranges cover everything from a small single-fronted shop to a large store with a long chilled run and food to go.
| Load | Energy a year | Cost a year |
|---|---|---|
| Multideck display chillers (open front, 2.5 to 8 metres) | 9,000 to 35,000 kWh | £2,250 to £8,750 |
| Walk-in cold room | 4,000 to 17,500 kWh | £1,000 to £4,375 |
| Frozen wall, chest and upright freezers | 2,500 to 20,000 kWh | £625 to £5,000 |
| Shop, window and canopy lighting | 3,000 to 16,000 kWh | £750 to £4,000 |
| Bake-off oven and hot food counter | 1,500 to 12,000 kWh | £375 to £3,000 |
| Space heating and door air curtain | 6,000 to 22,000 kWh | £420 to £5,500 |
Typical, estimated. Electricity at 25p per kWh; the heating row is costed at 7p per kWh if it is gas and 25p if it is electric, which is why its range is so wide. The top three rows are all refrigeration, and not one of them cares what day of the week it is.
Typical annual usage and bills, by shop type
| Shop type | Electricity a year | Gas a year | Annual bill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Off-licence or bottle shop | 12,000 to 45,000 kWh | 0 to 8,000 kWh | £3,400 to £12,200 |
| Greengrocer or fishmonger | 12,000 to 50,000 kWh | 0 to 10,000 kWh | £3,400 to £13,600 |
| Butcher | 18,000 to 50,000 kWh | 0 to 12,000 kWh | £4,900 to £13,700 |
| World food store | 30,000 to 150,000 kWh | 0 to 20,000 kWh | £7,900 to £39,300 |
| Farm shop or deli | 30,000 to 150,000 kWh | 0 to 50,000 kWh | £7,900 to £41,400 |
| Convenience or symbol-group store | 40,000 to 110,000 kWh | 0 to 18,000 kWh | £10,400 to £29,100 |
| Petrol forecourt shop | 90,000 to 300,000 kWh | 0 to 30,000 kWh | £22,900 to £77,500 |
Typical, estimated, from published UK benchmarks. Bills are priced at 25p per kWh for electricity, 7p per kWh for gas and around £365 a year of standing charges on the electricity supply, with a second standing charge on any gas meter. Plenty of shops in these categories are electricity only.
What moves you up and down a row is rarely floor area. It is chilled metres and trading hours. Two shops of the same size, one with four chiller doors and one with a twelve metre open multideck run plus a bake-off oven, are not in the same league at all. The trade definition of a convenience store is a sales area under 3,000 square feet, and you can sit at either end of that band on the same rates and get a very different bill.
The contract traps that cost food shops the most
Deemed and out-of-contract rates
When a fixed contract ends and nothing is signed to replace it, the supplier keeps supplying you on deemed or out-of-contract rates. There is no price cap on non-domestic supply, so those rates are simply whatever your supplier publishes. Independent comparisons put them roughly 30 to 80% above a negotiated fixed price, with deemed unit rates commonly landing around 40 to 55p per kWh against 22 to 30p on a fixed deal.
Run that against a store using 70,000 kWh of electricity a year. At 25p, the units cost £17,500. At 40p, the same units cost £28,000. Same chillers, same hours, same shop, no change to how you trade. That gap is the single biggest number in this article, and it is decided by paperwork.
Rollover, and the renewal window you did not notice
The other way shops end up overpaying is being rolled onto a fresh contract at whatever the market happened to be doing that week. Ofgem limits rollover contracts for microbusinesses to a maximum of 12 months, which caps the damage but does not prevent it. The fix is to treat your end date as a diary entry rather than a surprise. Business energy can be priced and locked in up to 12 months ahead of your renewal, so you can hold today's rates without breaking the deal you are in.
Standing charges and second meters
Standing charges are around £365 a year per electricity meter, plus a second one on any gas meter. On a big chilled load that is small change next to the unit rate. On a small one it is not: an off-licence using 12,000 kWh pays about £3,000 of units, so £365 is more than a tenth of the bill.
Watch out for multi-meter sites. A shop with a flat above it, a separate storeroom, a butchery counter that was once a different unit, or a workshop at the back can easily carry two or three supplies. Each has its own contract, its own end date and its own ability to drift out of contract quietly while you watch the main one.
Half-hourly meters and available capacity
Larger sites, and forecourt shops in particular, often sit on half-hourly metering. That brings two extra things to check. Your available capacity is set in kVA and charged for whether you draw it or not, so it is worth comparing your authorised capacity against your actual peak demand rather than paying for headroom nobody uses. And on a half-hourly supply you should be priced on your real load shape, not a generic profile, which matters when a car wash or jet wash puts sharp spikes on top of a flat chilled baseload.
Seven things that cut the baseload
None of these change how you trade, and the first two are the ones food shops most often have not done.
- Night blinds on the open multidecks. Roughly 10% off that cabinet for the hours you are shut, and they cost very little.
- Glass doors where the category can take them. Around 30% off that cabinet, because unlike a blind it works through the trading day too.
- Clean condenser coils and filters quarterly. Dust makes the compressor run longer to hold the same shelf temperature, so you pay for the dirt every hour of every day.
- Check door seals and strip curtains monthly. One worn cold room seal pulls warm air in all day and the compressor never quite catches up.
- LEDs and timers on shop, canopy, window and cabinet lighting. Lighting is 3,000 to 16,000 kWh a year here, so £750 to £4,000, and a display window does not need to be lit at 3am.
- Sort out the front door. Space heating and the air curtain are 6,000 to 22,000 kWh a year. A curtain set too high, or a door propped open in winter, quietly heats the pavement.
- Put your contract end date in the diary. This is the one with the largest number attached to it, and it takes five minutes.
When to switch, and how it works with us
Start comparing 6 to 12 months before your contract ends. That is early enough to hold a price rather than take whatever the market is doing in the week your deal lapses, and it is the difference between choosing a rate and being given one. If your end date has already passed, you are almost certainly on deemed or out-of-contract rates and there is no reason to wait at all.
The process itself is short. You send one recent bill. It carries your meter number, your current unit rate and standing charge, your annual consumption and usually your contract end date, which is everything we need to price you against 20 plus business suppliers. We do the paperwork with the incoming supplier and the old one closes your account.
Nothing physical happens at the shop. Same wires, same meter, same chillers running through the whole thing. There is no interruption to your supply and no engineer visit. The service is free to you because the incoming supplier pays us a commission, and that commission is disclosed on your quote before you agree to anything. You can get a free estimate and upload a bill here, or read the sector detail on our convenience and food retail energy guide.
Questions we get asked
I'm a symbol group store. Doesn't the group handle my energy?
Very rarely. Symbol agreements with Nisa, Premier, Spar, Costcutter, Londis or Best-one normally cover stock supply, fascia and marketing, not your utility contracts. If the energy bill arrives addressed to your limited company or to you personally, that contract is yours and you can move it. Refits are worth a second look too: plenty of stores had chillers and a food to go counter added without anyone re-pricing the supply that now has to run them.
Is there any point talking to you while I'm mid-contract?
Yes, and it is usually the best time. Rates can be agreed and held up to 12 months ahead of your end date, so you are not exposed to whatever the market does in your renewal week. All we need at that stage is your end date and a recent bill.
How much could a shop like mine actually save?
Businesses that switch with us save 40% on average, typically 30 to 50%, and more if you're on out-of-contract or deemed rates. Our best single bill to date came in 72% lower, which is one result rather than something to plan around. Nothing is certain until we have seen the rates you are actually paying, which is the whole reason we ask for a bill rather than a guess. See how we estimate.
Figures on this page are estimates from published UK benchmarks and standard engine assumptions, not quotes, and your own bill depends on your meters, your chilled metres and your trading hours. See how we estimate.