The co-owner of a clean food cafe says she has worked too hard and too long to let an electricity company beat her, after getting a bill for almost €8,000.
Sonia Micallef of the Bare Food Company is now looking at other ways to cut down on energy costs and has vowed to do extra shifts herself rather than put prices up at the venue in Drogheda, Co Louth.
The restaurant has become hugely popular due its clean eating ethos including not using refined white sugar in any of their desserts and having a predominately gluten-free menu.
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The Airtricity bill for €7759.78 is almost quadruple the amount of the highest winter bill received last year which amounted to €1,800.
"I'm so emotional about this but we're not going to let it beat us," she said.
"When I got the bill yesterday, a customer told me that she was going to light a candle for me because she knew how hard we worked here to give people wholesome food.
"We opened seven years ago and it took a few years to get off the ground because it is so specialised but we got through that to make it hugely successful. We use a whole breast of chicken in every sandwich and we cook and slice our own hams. We refuse to use refined sugar in any desserts in order to give customers a clean eating experience.
"We are at present emptying the big fridge and the chef is going to try and reduce energy use in the kitchen. We are going to empty the deli fridge every night and swap some of the sandwich toasters which are super hard on energy
"We have an electrician coming in to see what else we can do.
"I always put blankets on the tables anyway for customers to use but I will not be turning off the heating for customers to eat in the cold
"This bill is so high because we are out of contract. We tried to ring around but other providers told us to stay where we were because they could only offer us double the price of the 41c per unit we were getting until now. Our last bill was around the €5,000 mark
"We haven't even got the gas bill yet.
"I hate hurting people or letting them down so we will keep going. My husband Damien and I got through tougher things and we have worked too long and too hard for an electricity company to beat us now.
"I don't want to put prices up. In fact, I would rather work an extra shift to keep prices down. We will do this, even if we have to work seven days a week ourselves to do it."
In response to a request from the Irish Mirror, an SSE Airtricity spokesperson said: “The bill in question for this customer is based on estimated readings over a six-month billing period from 15 April - 15 October. Due to estimated meter reads, bills issued during the summer needed to be adjusted following actual reads submitted to us by ESB networks in August.
"We have received no reads from the customer since 2021. Payments made by the customer during this period have been included against the up-to-date balance.
“We would always encourage customers to submit actual meter readings for the usage to ensure bills are based on actual usage and not estimates. This is of particular importance for customers with high energy usage.
“A supervisor is available to discuss this query in detail with the customer in order to resolve any issue."
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