AU · 2026 edition
Café Energy Saving Guide — Australia
Every energy use in a café, priced. What you'd save a year, what the fix costs, how fast it pays back — and whether it's yours to fix or your landlord's.
What’s inside
A plain-English walk through every part of a café’s power bill — written by an energy manager who has spent 15 years cutting energy costs for commercial and industrial sites.
Each section covers one energy use and gives you the three numbers that matter: what you’d save a year, what the fix costs up front, and how long it takes to pay back. Colour-coded, so the quick wins jump out and the long shots are honest about it.
- Every Opportunity at a Glance — one page, ranked by saving and payback. Start here.
- Your Bill, Tariff & Rebates — what you’re actually paying for.
- Refrigeration — display cabinets and coolrooms, usually the biggest pool of savings.
- Coffee & Espresso — machine, grinder and hot water, including the overnight habit worth $117–175 a year on its own.
- Kitchen · Dishwashing & Hot Water · Café HVAC · Lighting
- Solar & Batteries — including when they don’t stack up.
- Quick Wins to do this week — free or near-free. Start Monday.
Tenant or landlord?
Every opportunity is tagged with who actually controls it. If you lease your shop, you already know how much of the equipment isn’t yours — this guide separates what you can fix today from what belongs in an email to your centre or building manager, and tells you which ones are worth that email.
Who it’s for
Café, coffee shop and small eatery owners and managers in Australia who want lower running costs without a consultant’s invoice. Useful whether you own the building or lease the shop.
The honest bit
Figures are sized for a reference café — around 20,000 kWh a year, 30–50 seats, a two-group espresso machine, open seven days. Cafés scale by equipment rather than floor space, so most figures are per cabinet, per machine or per fitting: multiply by however many you run.
Some upgrades don’t pay back in a café. Those are marked as such, with the working shown, instead of being quietly left out.
21-page PDF · 29 costed opportunities across 8 categories · 2026 edition · Australian rates, rebates and standards · every figure traces to a documented source or a calculation we show our working for · free corrections to the 2026 edition.
See inside
Real pages from the guide — a preview of the at-a-glance savings summary (every row unlocked in the full guide) and a complete category page, exactly as you'll get it.
