Energy bills for pubs and restaurants in 2026: what the numbers say and where venues can cut
The official average for business electricity in early 2026 was 24.14p per kWh, but your price depends on when you signed, how you are metered and how you run the kitchen. Four places to look before you blame the market.
By Alex Nightingale
Platform engineering
Energy is rarely the biggest line in a restaurant’s accounts, which is part of why it gets so little attention until the renewal letter arrives. The Carbon Trust’s hospitality guide says catering energy accounts for between 4 and 6% of operating profits, so a saving goes straight to the bottom line, without needing a single extra cover. That is the case for looking. What follows is the dull part: what the official numbers say, and which four things are actually in your control.
What the official number says
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero publishes the benchmark. Its Quarterly Energy Prices release of 30 June 2026 covers January to March 2026. The average non-domestic electricity price, including the Climate Change Levy, was 24.14 pence per kWh, a year-on-year fall of 6.2%. The average gas price was 5.17 pence per kWh, which the report describes as 28% below the all-time high in the first quarter of 2023.
Three reasons not to take that as your price:
- It is an average of what businesses paid across existing contracts, not what a supplier would quote today. DESNZ says plainly that many businesses are on fixed-price contracts “negotiated and renewed at different points in time”, so market moves reach customers unevenly.
- It varies by size band. The report notes that the electricity average “varies by the amount of electricity purchased”, so a small venue’s price can sit well away from the headline.
- It is a snapshot of one quarter, so it says nothing about what a contract signed now would cost.
1. Know your contract end date
The cheapest energy decision is not renewing by accident. Ofgem’s guide to business contracts lists what happens if you do nothing: a rollover or evergreen contract can renew automatically for a fixed term, usually 12 months, “and may be on a higher rate”; out-of-contract and deemed rates are “usually more expensive than fixed-term contracts”; and a deemed contract is what you land on when you move into premises without arranging one.
If you employ fewer than 10 people and turn over no more than £2 million, or use up to 100,000 kWh of electricity a year or 293,000 kWh of gas, you count as a microbusiness and get extra protection: the supplier must limit termination notice on evergreen contracts to 30 days and give you renewal prices before the contract ends. Put the end date and the notice window in the diary, with a reminder months ahead.
2. Look at how you are metered
Some sites are billed on measured half-hourly use rather than estimates. Ofgem’s half-hourly settlement guide says this applies to businesses in profile classes 5 to 8 with an advanced meter, and that you can check from the first two digits of your supply number: 05, 06, 07 or 08 means yes.
Why care? Because a half-hourly record shows what the building does at 3 a.m. Refrigeration and standby loads are visible there, and so is the extraction fan someone forgot to turn off. If your supplier can give you the half-hourly profile, read it before you talk about price.
3. Treat the kitchen as the main appliance
The Carbon Trust’s contract-catering metering study metered four contract-catering sites and found about 40% of energy went on cooking, 28% on refrigeration, 17% on extraction and 5% on dishwashing. These were contract-catering kitchens rather than a neighbourhood pub, so treat the split as a prompt to measure your own, not a rule.
The practical points in the hospitality guide are unglamorous and mostly free:
- Switch off grills, fryers and hobs after use, and label equipment with its preheat time so nobody turns it on an hour early.
- Do not use cooking equipment to warm the kitchen when staff arrive.
- Keep chiller and freezer doors shut, run dishwashers full, and use residual heat to dry rather than the drying cycle.
- Replace equipment over 15 years old when you can, and judge new equipment on lifetime running cost, not purchase price. Hobs with pan sensors that switch off automatically can save 5% on energy costs, the guide says.
- Train the kitchen team. The guide says awareness and energy management training can cut catering energy use by up to 30%. That is an upper bound, not a promise.
One number worth keeping in mind: the guide says that typically 65% of the energy supplied to cooking equipment leaves through the canopy as convected heat. If extraction runs all day, you are paying to heat the street.
4. Ask what the data cannot tell you
DESNZ figures and Carbon Trust percentages are broad. They do not know your extraction layout, your hours or who controls your meter. The useful move is the boring one: take twelve months of bills, find the contract end date, check the meter type, and walk the kitchen at close with a notebook. If the fault is the contract, fix the contract. If it is the kitchen, buying power cheaper will not help.