by Nicholas Sakelaris | Staff Writer
The Dallas Business Journal
Pizza Hut will be putting high-tech thermostats and other energy management systems developed by a Richardson company in all 500 corporate-owned restaurants, the chain announced Wednesday.
Plano-based Pizza Hut awarded an exclusivity contract to Entouch Controls for the restaurants it owns and will recommend them for 5,800 franchise-owned locations.
The systems have been tested in about a dozen locations around the country in different climates, said Doug Terfehr, a Pizza Hut spokesman. He said the company would not release specific details on cost, how much energy was saved or how long it would take to get a return on investment, only that it’s “quicker than a lot of things that we do.”
“What we like most is the environmental benefit that it has,” he said.
Greg Fasullo, CEO of Entouch Controls, said this is one of the biggest contracts to date. He expects to have the systems installed in corporate-owned Pizza Huts by the end of the year.
Entouch developed the thermostat that communicates with the cloud through its own wireless network. The analytics are monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week by Entouch employees who look for irregularities or maintenance issues before they become a problem, Fasullo said.
Having exclusive rights to thousands of Pizza Hut franchisees is the big prize, though.
“Those franchisees haven’t agreed to install us yet so we’re still working through that process,” Fasullo said. “We went through a pretty extensive RFP with corporate and got selected.”
The majority of the stores are owned by about 30 owners, he said.
“We’re already working with three of the franchise groups. One in California, one in the Northeast and another one’s based in Kansas,” he said.
Terfehr said the franchise owners typically “follow our lead.”
Entouch has installed its system in about 8,000 retail and restaurant locations. The company raised $8.5 million in November.
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