What your ref really costs you, per bottle

Ask most owners what a cold softdrink earns them and you get the margin: bought at this, sold at that, the difference is mine. Almost nobody subtracts the electricity. The ref runs whether you sell twenty bottles or two, and it is billed once a month in a lump that never gets divided by anything.

It divides easily. Here is how.

The rate, as of this month

Meralco announced on 11 September 2026 that the overall rate for a typical residential customer falls to ₱14.7424 per kilowatt-hour, from ₱14.7833 in August. That is a drop of ₱0.0409, and the second monthly cut in a row after August's ₱0.0428.

What that is worth on a household bill:

Do not celebrate too hard. Underneath the headline, the generation charge went up ₱0.4232 per kWh, which Meralco put down to the weaker peso and higher fuel costs. The bill only fell because ancillary service charges dropped ₱0.3344 and taxes and other charges dropped a net ₱0.1657. Those are one-off movements. The cost of actually making the electricity rose, and that is the part that tends to stay.

If you are outside the Meralco area, your rate will differ, sometimes by a lot. The method below is the same; swap in the figure from your own bill. Divide the total amount by the total kWh on the bill and you have your real all-in rate, which is the honest number to use.

Your ref has a sticker that answers this

Every refrigerating appliance sold in the Philippines carries the Department of Energy's yellow label under the Philippine Energy Labeling Program. It shows the star rating, the energy efficiency factor, and the two numbers you want: estimated monthly energy consumption in kilowatt-hours, and an estimated monthly running cost.

Go and look at yours. It is usually on the door or inside the cabinet. If the sticker is long gone, the model number and a search will usually get you there, or the manual will have it.

Then the arithmetic is one line:

Monthly kWh on the label × your rate per kWh = what the ref costs you a month.

Worked through at this month's Meralco rate:

A word of caution on the label figure: it is measured under test conditions. A ref standing in a hot tindahan that gets opened fifty times a day, with the door seal going and the coil behind it furred with dust, will use more than the sticker says. Treat the label number as the floor, not the answer.

Now divide it by the bottles

Say your label says 45 kWh, so ₱663 a month. Say you sell 15 cold bottles a day, which is 450 a month.

₱663 ÷ 450 = ₱1.47 of electricity per bottle sold.

Now put that against the margin. Here is what those drinks cost on a Philippine online grocery shelf on 18 September 2026, which is roughly what a supermarket would charge your customer:

If you buy a Mismo at ₱16 and sell it cold at ₱22, your gross is ₱6. Take off ₱1.47 of electricity and your real earning is ₱4.53, which is 24% less than you thought.

That is still a good sale. The point is not that cold drinks are bad. The point is what happens at low volume.

At 5 bottles a day, the same ₱663 works out to ₱4.42 per bottle. On a ₱6 gross margin, the ref has eaten nearly three quarters of it. At three bottles a day you are running a refrigerator for free and paying for the privilege.

What to do with the number

If you sell a lot, stop worrying. Above roughly fifteen or twenty cold items a day, the electricity per unit is small and the ref is comfortably earning. Keep going.

If you sell a little, the question is not the ref, it is the range. A ref at low volume is a fixed cost looking for more things to sell. Ice, ice candy, bottled water, chilled yoghurt drinks and RTD milk all ride on electricity you are already paying for. Every additional cold line you add spreads the same ₱663 further without adding a peso to the bill.

Two refs running when one would do is the most common expensive mistake. If a second unit is half empty, consolidate and unplug it. That is not a small saving, it is the whole ₱400 to ₱900 again.

Cheap fixes that actually work: pull the ref away from the wall so air moves behind it, brush the dust off the coil, keep it out of direct sun, and check the door seal by closing it on a piece of paper. If the paper slides out easily, the seal is gone and you are chilling the street.

Then count the cold sales for one week. Not a guess, an actual count. That is the number the whole calculation hangs on, and almost nobody has it.

If you record sales in TindaJuan, you already have it. The insights screen shows what sold and how often over a period, so you can take a real count of cold items for the week, divide the ref's monthly cost by four, and get your true per-bottle electricity without guessing.

The short version

• Meralco's September rate is ₱14.7424 per kWh, down ₱0.0409. But the generation charge rose ₱0.4232, so the relief is not structural.
• The yellow DOE sticker on your ref gives its estimated monthly kWh. Multiply by your rate.
• A 45 kWh ref costs about ₱663 a month at this month's rate.
• Divide that by the cold items you actually sell in a month. At 15 a day it is ₱1.47 a bottle. At 5 a day it is ₱4.42.
• Low volume is not a reason to unplug. It is a reason to add more cold lines to the electricity you are already buying.

Sources. Meralco September 2026 rate advisory of 11 September 2026, reported by Rappler and BusinessWorld. Department of Energy Philippine Energy Labeling Program for the yellow label. Drink prices from the public product listings of shopsuki.ph, captured September 18, 2026.