COMPANY HISTORY
Royal Pastry Shop was established in 1941 in East Cambridge, MA by Vincenzo and Ninetta Coppola. Vincenzo was born in Hamrun, Malta, but was of Sicilian descent. Vincenzo emigrated to the U.S. in 1925. He worked at his uncle’s pastry shop in Boston’s North End before going to Cambridge to open his own business. His twin sons eventually took over and expanded the business by opening a second location in historic Lexington, MA. The business is still owned by the Coppola family and continues to use the same Italian recipes that Vincenzo used 70 years ago.
In 1941, the Pastry Shop was an old world Italian pastry shop. Over the years, to keep up with customer demands, it expanded to bake traditional American pastries, pies, and cakes. Although its Italian rum cakes, cannolis, Italian cookies, and ricotta pies remain many family favorites. Located at 738 Cambridge Street in Cambridge, MA, Royal Pastry Shop is open 7 days a week, baking fresh goods daily to ensure freshness and quality.
THE CHALLENGE
For Lisa Moreira, owner, the goal was to ensure the store’s fresh baked goods were well lit in their display cases. For Lisa, it’s not enough for lighting to be energy efficient; it also has to be stylish and presentable to highlight their cakes, cannolis, cookies, and pies.
THE PRISM SOLUTION
Lisa and her team were recommended by the City of Cambridge to work with Prism. After a quick energy efficiency audit, Prism worked with Lisa and her team to understand her lighting challenge. Together, they designed a solution to retrofit Royal Pastry Shop’s existing low-efficiency CFL and T12 fixtures to high-efficiency LEDs. With light fixtures that dated back to the ’80s, Lisa will no longer need to replace her lamps as frequently. The new LEDs last up to 10 times longer and maintain the same quality of light. Effectively, Royal Pastry Shop will save $634.08 in maintenance costs.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The energy efficiency improvements have made a big impact on Lisa’s bottom line. Royal Pastry Shop’s existing lighting used 18,555 kWh/year. The energy efficiency improvements reduced that to 8,197 kWh/year, saving 10,358 kWh in energy. Plus, “The incentives were very good,” noted Lisa. Eversource offered 70% incentives on the CFL to LED upgrades, and 100% incentives on the T12 to LED upgrades. At a total project cost of $9,380.35, Eversource paid $7,712.39. Best of all, with Eversource’s 24 month, 0% financing plan, Lisa will only pay $139/month for 12 months.
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