A restaurant owner has told how he has reshaped his business amid the cost of living crisis - saving money and improving his work/life balance.
Every Sunday evening, Mick Hughes now turns off up to 15 coolers and subsidiary fridges at the Stockhouse Restaurant and transfers any perishable produce to one main fridge and freezer.
'We are going around switching things off that we should have been doing the last nine years,' he said.
He has also decided to cut the restaurant opening hours in Trim, Co. Meath from six days to four, which is managing to keep his electricity bill from increasing post hikes.
"Our electricity bill was always around 5,000 euro every two months before prices escalated," he said.
"We got our first actual bill a few weeks ago and believe it or not, it was down a bit on the norm, coming in at 4.500 euro
"Since costs began to soar, we took the decision to only open four days instead of six. As well as saving money, we also have given ourselves back some kind of life!
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"I was in the butchers recently and he was saying he transfers all meat at the end of the day into one big fridge so I decided to do the same.
"Every Sunday night now, we turn off all the wine and beer display fridges and coolers and all the smaller fridges in the kitchen and move all the necessary food into the biggest fridge and freezer. it amounts to about about 15 appliances which we turn on again the following Wednesday night
"On normal Monday to Wednesday nights, we would have just about broken even by opening to a small number of diners so we decided to close those nights or suffer more significant losses with the rising costs
"It means we also don't have to worry about getting extra staff to cover swinging shifts over six days. All staff now get their full-time week so we couldn't close any further or it would make the staff part-time
"The energy hikes have made us focus more on the workings of the business and even if the costs were to decrease, we will carry on with the efficiencies to make our business more profitable.
"We should have been switching off these fridges nine years ago.
"The reduced hours have also given us, our staff and the chefs a better life balance with more time to do other things.
"I'm not sure if we are getting better at it or whether prices have decreased but we don't seem to have the same problems with supply of ingredients that we had a few months ago but regardless, we sit down each week with the chef and shop around because there is a huge fluctuation of prices out there.
"Right now we are flat to the board with Christmas on our doorstep. I know the restaurant will flatline in January and February but we will make hay while the sun shines and hopefully that will carry us through.
