C&K Market, Inc., is a small independent grocery retailer based in Medford, Oregon. Their flagship retail banner is Ray’s Food Place, a full-service grocery store that emphasizes quality fresh products with a local flair. As an employee-owned business, they’re motivated to find ways to keep costs down and operations efficient.

For C&K’s Director of Store Development and Maintenance, Nikki Kahler, that can be challenging, and one of the reasons she and her staff have worked with Energy Trust for years. Together, they’ve tackled energy-efficient upgrades including LED lighting, a custom heat recovery system and cooler doors. Earlier this year, they took their commitment a step further by joining Energy Trust’s Strategic Energy Management (SEM) offering.

“We’re just fixing stuff all the time,” Kahler said. “And as we do that, we come across a lot of things we can no longer fix. Now we have to replace it.”

That’s one of the big reasons they partnered with Energy Trust. And the other reason?

“I just don’t like seeing energy being wasted. There’s no reason to waste energy when you can find solutions.” – Nikki Kahler, C&K Market, Inc.

Building an energy culture
After an introductory meeting, Ray’s Food Place enrolled ten of their 39 stores in SEM. With coaching support and clear goals in place, they began building an energy team, creating an energy policy and using Energy Trust’s modeling tools to track energy performance across multiple locations.

In their first year of participation, the team completed SEM’s five key milestones that serve as both guidance and motivation: establishing an Energy Team, Performance Tracking, Executive Sponsor Engagement, Action Planning and Energy Policy Development. Each milestone comes with a $1,000 cash incentive to recognize progress and keep the team engaged. So far, Kahler’s team has achieved three milestones and is building steady momentum toward the rest.

Through SEM, Ray’s has participated in “Treasure Hunts,” hands-on walkthroughs that help identify energy-saving opportunities hiding in everyday operations. From refrigeration schedules to lighting controls, small adjustments uncovered during these activities add up to significant savings over time.

Store managers have also completed specialized refrigeration training, an important step for grocery retailers where refrigeration is often the single largest energy expense. During these training sessions, staff toured facilities with SEM coaches and cooling contractors to better understand how to optimize systems, lower energy use and extend equipment life.

Investing in smart upgrades
In addition to their SEM success, Ray’s recently installed a high-speed door on one of their walk-in freezers, earning a $14,000 cash incentive from Energy Trust. The upgrade reduced their out-of-pocket cost to just $1,100 and is expected to save nearly $22,000 in annual energy costs, a huge return for a single improvement.

“Energy Trust was knowledgeable on what incentives were available,” said Kahler. “They were able to go into a store and search for ways to save money, offer incentives to direct us on what we could get help with and guide us to drive some of our decisions.”

Looking ahead
C&K Market is developing campaigns to remind staff across all stores about saving energy and encouraging them to identify energy management improvements, fostering a company-wide culture of awareness and efficiency.

They also plan to continue their SEM involvement through the rest of the year and beyond by exploring Energy Trust’s internship incentive, which offers funding to hire an intern who can assist with data tracking and project management.

Joining and continuing with the Energy Trust’s SEM offering has given Kahler and her team the tools and guidance to keep pursuing energy savings across all their locations. “We can use these tools every day in our stores, not just for one project, but across the business,” she added.

Learn how Energy Trust’s SEM offering helps businesses save energy and build long-term resilience through expert guidance, hands-on tools and collaboration. Visit our website to learn more or email existingbuildings@energytrust.org.