One thing a successful supermarket chain has to have is good lighting. Customers want a bright environment to shop.

Schnucks Markets is a highly-successful chain with ninety-eight modern supermarkets in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. However, like every successful business, Schnucks looks for ways to reduce its costs without lowering quality standards. The challenge they brought to City Lighting: Lower the energy costs of lighting their stores without sacrificing the amount of light.

The solution? We proposed that Schnucks retrofit all their stores, replacing their T12 fluorescent lamps and magnetic ballasts with new T8 Octron lamps and electronic ballasts. These lights and ballasts are a real energy saver. At the same time, they actually improve light levels and give a better color rendition so that the tomatoes, sirloin steaks, fruit juice and coffee cake all are appetizing to see.

However, the most important reason for the new lighting was the dramatic savings in energy costs. Now, Schnucks enjoys a two-million-dollar energy savings every year. As part of our service at the speed of Right, we surveyed each store and provided accurate energy studies to show these benefits.

John Muller, director of facilities maintenance for Schnucks, said, "Our store managers as well as our engineering department noticed a dramatic reduction in power consumption, and management saw the additional benefit in increased lighting levels."

And it wasn't a bother to customers to make the changeover. We warehoused the lighting products and shipped them to stores as needed with a minimum of inconvenience to shoppers.

Schnucks got just what they needed from City Lighting-lower energy costs and better light levels!