ESC GFEN NA Consortium Minutes 051619

ESC GFEN/NA Consortium Minutes from May 16, 2019 Meeting was called to order at 2:05 pm Eastern Time Attendance: Ann Lovcik CenterPoint Energy Chuck Warrington Clearwater Gas Greg Tomsick ESC Nancy Langdon Northwest Natural Tom Simpson Northwest Natural Dave Miller ONE Gas Hayley Cunningham ONE Gas Lydia Ruiz SoCalGas Meet Our New Manufacturing Member: Barb shared that Nieco has recently joined the GFEN/NA consortium as an affiliate member. Nieco was established in 1905 and has an enduring legacy of quality sheet metal and equipment manufacturing. Nieco has been designing and hand-building innovative automatic kitchen equipment in Northern California since 1969 when the first automatic broiler was installed in Disneyland’s Tomorrowland Terrace. Since then, Nieco has built and sold more than 75,000 broilers around the world! Nieco equipment helps restaurants save money on energy costs, reduce emissions, and increase quality, speed and consistency of service. Nieco will be presenting at the Customer Care Workshop in August so NA/GFEN members will have the opportunity to welcome Marlo Rogers from Nieco at that time. Update from Greg Tomsick, Relationship Manager: Greg updated the group on activities that he has been involved in since our last call. Greg attended EEI Conference, Seattle, WA, in April which allowed him to make numerous meaningful connections with individuals in the foodservice industry. Some of the key contacts were: Cinemark Theaters, Kwik Trip, Caribou/Einstein’s (owned by JAB Holdings which also owns Panera’s, Krispy Kreme, Peet’s Coffee), and McDonald’s. Greg also attended the PRSM 2019 conference in Denver in April. PRSM stands for Professional Retail Store Maintenance Association. The PRSM National Conference is the largest multi-site retail conference with best-in-class education sessions and networking events plus more than 300+ qualified exhibitors all under one roof. Greg was able to make some contacts at this event. He will also be attending the National Restaurant Association conference from May 18 – 21 in Chicago, Ill. As a result of attending EEI in April, Greg has set up a meeting with Steve DePalo, Director of Restaurant Sustainability, for McDonald’s. Greg and Steve will be meeting at McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago at the conclusion of NRA. As a result of attending these events, Greg has started to develop an up-to-date and meaningful contact list of National Account customers. Greg will continue to update this list and share with members. Going forward, Greg will attempt to set up meetings with key accounts who are based in cities where he is attending a conference. TMAF: Barb reminded everyone that registration for the next TMAF is now open. The location is Montreal, CA at the Hotel Omni Mont-Royal; from June 4 – 6. There will be a Kitchen Managers meeting on Day 1, starting at 8:00 am. This will be followed by the GFEN/NA consortium meeting at 10:00. In the afternoon of Day 1, we will have a Foodservice track. We have 4 speakers lined up including the 2019 Blue Flame Award Winner, Belshaw Adamatic. Info on TMAF, including registration, can be found here: https://www.energysolutionscenter.org/events/technology_market_assessment_forum.aspx Update from GTI: In recent weeks, several articles that have appeared in well-known newspapers (LA Times and NY Times to name a few) that have focused on the health concerns caused by cooking in the home. The NY Times article blamed cooking in general but several blamed natural gas cooking and “ultra-fine particles”. The LA Times article wrote about how electric induction cooking is better and more efficient than cooking with gas. Frank Johnson, GTI, feels the source of the information in these articles is Lawrence Berkely Labs; he feels the methodology used is flawed and they don’t have a scientific-based argument. Frank has been compiling these articles and is working with member utilities within GFEN/NA to prepare a response. Frank noted that GTI will be doing some of their own lab work and we could see a response in the August/September time frame. Customer Care Workshop: The 2019 Customer Care Workshop will be held from August 13 – 15 in Minneapolis, MN, at the CenterPoint Energy demo kitchen. We have been fine-tuning the agenda and are pleased to be offering a great deal of education-related topics along with panel discussions. We plan to have three panels: an end-user panel, a trade ally panel and a dealer rep panel. We have already sent out a save-the date email and the event is listed on the ESC site under Calendar of Events. Registration will open shortly after the June TMAF. Space is limited at this event so you will need to register early. Open Discussion: Following the formal agenda, an open discussion was held. Tom Simpson, Northwest Natural Gas, commented that he would like to have a discussion at TMAF where members share best practices: what has worked well and what hasn’t. Another suggestion was to have a discussion on how companies address and deal with rebates when chain accounts use a 3rd party to process rebates. Greg has had some experience on this and we will discuss further in Montreal. We will also touch on utilizing rebates in emergency repair situations. The meeting was adjourned at 2:50 PM Eastern time.