Keep Your Food And Ingredients With Reach-in Refrigerators

Reach-in refrigerators play a crucial role in the commercial kitchen, whether in a restaurant, hotel, café, or pizzeria. All food establishments aim to serve the most delicious recipes with the best ingredients. However, it is, of course, impossible to bring and prepare all the necessary foodstuff on a daily basis from the field, farm, or factory. Hence, all food-serving businesses establish a commercial refrigeration system to meet their refrigeration needs to keep vegetables, fruits, meat, and other food products safe and secure until they are served to the customers.

Reach-in refrigerators are the leading and most widespread commercial refrigeration units used in various sized food serving outlets. Therefore, the refrigeration vendors have developed different methods, versions, and features to meet the varying needs of commercial kitchens. Thus, it would be better for you to have a prior insight into the commercial reach-in refrigerators to find the most suitable option to match your needs and conditions.

Essential Factors Affect The Performance Of A Reach-in Refrigerator

1. Door Types

Reach-in refrigerators come with different door options, each of which is designed for various purposes.

Solid vs. Glass Doors

Reach-in fridges are intended to be used both at the front of the house and at the back of the restaurants. However, depending on where these commercial reach-in coolers are placed, there arise additional concerns. For instance, the priority of the commercial reach-in refrigerators is to maintain the interior chill despite the numerous openings. The reach-in refrigerators keep the often-needed ingredients and restaurant supplies fresh and chilled inside. The kitchen staff frequently open the door and take all their needs from this working box. As a result, the stability of the interior cold gains extra importance; thus, the solid door reach-in refrigerators are the right choice, in this case, thanks to their high better insulation.

The glass door reach-in refrigerators mainly target presenting versatile refrigerated storage at the front of the house. The see-through glass doors enable your customers to see all the products inside and think about what to buy without opening the door. Although the glass door reach-in refrigerators are not as insulated as the solid doors, the smaller number of openings and closings will naturally decrease the loss of the interior chill, thereby saving money on your energy bill. Additionally, these types of industrial fridges will create an attractive and safe area to enable you to showcase your products in convenience stores, groceries, restaurants, and cafes.

Swing Doors vs. Sliding Doors

Another door type that is influential on the reach-in cooler performance is the opening style of the doors. Swing doors provide a larger loading/unloading gap for your personnel, but they require larger space to stay fully open. Hence, these types of professional coolers may not be suitable for compact kitchens, which have limited space.

The sliding-door models, on the contrary, need much less space as they move on the embedded rails, and the gap that is available for storing the commercial cooler is limited.

Full Height Doors vs. Half Doors vs. Combo Doors

Reach-in refrigerators present various choices of door types. While some models are offered with full height doors, you can also opt for the Dutch-door type commercial reach-in coolers, which are equipped with half doors for different compartments.

There are also models which feature combined door types. You can have a glass door and solid door reach-in fridges; or half-door models with additional drawer compartments. There are full-height-door models which also have half-door sections and drawers.

2. Compressor

Compressors are the principal component of a reach-in refrigerator since they are the critical equipment that conducts the cooling process. Reach-in compressor installation is also significant because of the varying conditions of commercial kitchens, such as the kitchen heat, main food ingredients, etc.

Bottom Mounted

Reach-in refrigerators with bottom-mounted compressors are technically designed to make use of the cooler air at the bottom section of the kitchen to save energy. Furthermore, these models offer an elevated bottom shelf for more comfort during working.

Top Mounted

These top-mounted compressor reach-in refrigerators units aim to use the hot air at the top of the kitchen to provide more storage room and keep the cooler equipment away from the dust and humidity. Hence, these are mainly suitable for the bakeries and pizzerias since commercial kitchens in these businesses use much flour and may cause clogging of the compressor and other parts of the cooler.

Remote

The other option for the compressor installation is to take them out of the kitchen. This method will prevent the extra noise and heat resulting from the compressors. However, installing and transferring these types of reach-in coolers is relatively complicated and requires additional expertise and cost.

3. Material of Reach-in Refrigerator

Another critical issue for you to consider when looking for a reach-in refrigerator is the material they are made of. Because of the heavy conditions of commercial kitchens and the regulations requiring non-toxic materials in food-contact areas, stainless steel is the primary element used in commercial refrigerator manufacture. However, the interior of some models can also be made with aluminum or ABC plastics.

4. Capacity and Energy Saving

Reach-in refrigerators are costly investments and vital equipment for food serving businesses. Furthermore, these industrial coolers consume a remarkable amount of energy and electricity, which will burden your electricity bill. Therefore, it is vital to determine the suitable capacity for your needs. Then, you can make a purchase from the one-door reach-in refrigerators, two or double-door reach-in refrigerators, and three-door reach-in coolers.

You should keep in mind that reach-in coolers should not be fully loaded to fully cool the interior and maintain the inner temperature consistently. Hence, you should evaluate your food storage needs and buy a larger capacity to fully benefit from the commercial refrigerator and to prevent food squander. You can also make a selection among the Energy Star certified models to decrease your energy bills with higher efficiency.

Chef’s Deal considers all these necessities and conditions and has created a vast, comprehensive inventory of commercial reach-in freezers from the leading vendors of Atosa, Beverage Air, Continental Refrigerator, Hoshizaki, Summit, Traulsen, True Refrigeration, Turbo Air Refrigeration, Victory, and more.

Hubert Reach-In Refrigerators

Hubert Reach-In Refrigerators