Cafe energy prices

Jenny saved £860 on her cafe energy prices

It is easy to take your eye off business energy rates

The electricity contract cost Jenny £4,430 a year. For the next contract, we reduced the annual electricity costs by £650. We also helped with the gas contract. The lower cafe energy prices saved Jenny over £860 a year in total.

Call our small team on 020 3372 6517 for clarity on your cafe energy prices.

We can email energy prices to you

Or call 020 3372 6517 for advice

“I found Kevan and Perfect Clarity through Twitter, quite by chance and just as I needed to start the infuriating process of sorting out three electric and one gas contract. The process was incredibly easy and such a weight off my mind, as well as saving me hours of desk work, it saved me money. I’m a convert!”

Cafe owner, Cornwall – Client since 2012

Clarity for your café energy prices

Café energy prices form a large chunk of your overall business costs. Even more so if you are looking for a new gas or electricity contact during the energy crisis. Without careful management, your energy prices can increase more than necessary and have a negative effect on your business.

Stay on top of your energy bills

Perfect Clarity help cafes up and down the country. And work with over 20 energy companies. Such a range of options means a greater choice of tariffs for our business customers. We will provide recommendations to you for different contract terms.

We also manage these contracts and are always looking ahead to the next one.

You can expect an email when prices are looking favourable for the next contract. This can result in energy savings of several hundred pounds per year. When prices are rising, confirming your next contract several months in advance can save you money.

Electricity prices can fluctuate substantially through the year. If you wait until the last month of your contract to arrange the next one, you are stuck with wholesale prices at that time.

Ensuring our cafes have a new energy contract lined up for the correct date, also avoids excess charges from suppliers for falling out of contract. These variable rates can be exhorbitant now that wholesale prices are so high (thanks to the global energy crisis). This is a common mistake by café owners, as your focus is understandably your customers and growing your business.

Complete a short form and we will check our prices for you

The energy companies are not on your side

Unfortunately, energy companies don’t usually give small businesses their best prices. However, at Perfect Clarity we work extremely hard for our customers. As we know the true value of gas and electricity prices, we hold the energy suppliers to account, and lower their prices for you.

Energy companies will usually try to put you on new prices that are substantially higher than their base rate. This difference is 100% more profit to them. Coffee shops do not have a large annual consumption of electricity compared to larger businesses – those are the customers energy companies are more interested in winning. So they will inflate prices for cafes and smaller businesses where they think they can get away with it.

That said, wholesale prices are also rising.

30-40% of our electricity generation is from gas power stations. Rising gas prices are pushing up the cost of electricity. The UK is importing more electricity from mainland Europe, which comes at an increased cost.

And around 60% of the price per kWh of electricity consists of third-party charges including network and distribution costs. These are charges made by the network for delivering electricity from power stations, through the grid, to your business or home. Along with government taxes and levies, these have increased in recent years.

On top of all this, you certainly don’t need energy companies’ extra profit added to your electricity bill. Call Perfect Clarity today for clarity on your cafe electricity contract.

Call 020 3372 6517 for advice on your energy contracts

Cornwall cafe saves hundreds of pounds a year

A café in Cornwall contacted us via social media, asking for help with their energy contracts. They knew when the individual contracts were due for renewal, but didn’t have the time to check prices from a range of suppliers.

Like most business owners, they were not aware of the large number of energy companies who supply gas or electricity to business premises – too many to work through themselves. We did all this for Hugo, and he also benefited from our lower energy prices for his cafe, saving several hundred pounds on their business energy costs.

Be wary of calls about your energy contracts

Most coffee shop owners are unaware of the wide range of prices you can be quoted for electricity. You may have been cold called by a rogue ‘broker’ or someone who told you they were from an energy company (there is a good chance they weren’t). They may have been quite forceful in telling you to agree a contract now.

You trust they are telling the truth and on your side. Why wouldn’t they?

However, it is a sad reflection on the energy industry, that these people may not have been working in your best interests. In conjunction with the energy supplier, they may have set your electricity or gas prices too high. We have seen examples of coffee shop electricity bills with very high rates (agreed by the energy company). This means annual costs over £500 or £1,000 more than they should be.

There are too many energy scams, and Ofgem do not regulate the industry particularly well.

Perfect Clarity are on your side though.

We don’t agree a contract with you over the phone. In fact, we don’t cold call businesses at all. Ofgem should ban verbal contracts as this only encourages these pushy, hard sell, sales calls.

All our contracts and prices are emailed to you. This lets you check the prices and compare them in your own time.

We build long-term relationships with our business customers.

Just like these café owners:

Cafe saves £480 on energy bill

Andrew’s café had a modest electricity use, even so, £2,260 is a large cost for a small business like this. We switched Andrew’s electricity supply to a different provider with cheaper electricity prices.

Andrew explained that the current supplier kept calling him with lower and lower prices, but they didn’t get close to the prices we quoted. This is because a small business like Andrew’s cafe uses a relatively low amount of electricity.

Energy companies don’t think this warrants their best prices, as their profit is largely built into the unit rate. For this reason, suppliers don’t usually offer cafes their best energy prices.

This is where we come in. We hold energy companies to account and get those prices as low as possible.

Saving of £950 per year on cafe energy prices

Kate runs a cafe in south London. The electricity contract had renewed automatically for some years, which meant the price she was paying went up a hefty amount every 12 months. Kate called us when she received the latest renewal notice from E.On and the cafe electricity prices quoted here would have cost Kate’s small business £2,700 in electricity for the coming year, even with a Direct Debit discount.

Kate called E.On to get a better price, which they duly delivered. However, it didn’t match the lower prices I was able to find from the many suppliers we work with. As such, we switched Kate to another electricity supplier on a 2-year fixed rate, and she saved a whopping £950 a year on her cafe energy prices.

Cafe saves £3,000 by coming off deemed rates

When you move premises, make it a priority to commit to a fixed price contract.

We met Ash at a business conference and he asked us to look at the electricity bills at his new cafe for him. Since he had been so tied up with the lease and setting the business up, he hadn’t got round to this yet. Luckily it had only been a few months that Ash had taken over the tenancy, as the incumbent supplier was charging ‘deemed’ or ‘out of contract’ rates. These rates are often very close to double the standard rate charged by suppliers.

If these prices had continued for a full year, the cafe electricity prices would have cost around £6,500 in electricity bills. To save Ash incurring more excessive costs for another 4 weeks (roughly the time it takes to switch supplier) we got his café on a 1-year fixed price contract with the current supplier at the site. This meant the price dropped immediately, saving nearly £3,000 for the rest of the year. At the end of the contract, we switched the business to a longer term contract with another supplier.