Commercial Refrigeration

Have you been regularly cleaning and servicing your ice machine? If not, you’re putting your customers at risk for illness by ingesting bacteria in ice, and your putting your business in jeopardy as well.

In a 2013 study of ice cleanliness at British food service establishments, 6 out of 10 restaurants were found to be serving their customers bacteria in their ice. In 60 percent of those restaurants, researchers found higher levels of bacteria in the ice than in their toilet water. Experts attributed this finding to the likelihood that the toilets were regularly cleaned, whereas the ice machines were not.

This is not an isolated incident. There’s another 2011 study of Las Vegas food establishments that uncovered alarming results about bacteria in ice as well, including the presence of heterotrophic bacteria that exceeded EPA limits, with more than 72% testing positive for “presumptive coliform bacteria presence.”

Related article: Your Ice Machine: the Most Dangerous Item in Your Restaurant.

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So many aspects of our lives depend on refrigeration: it’s vital for food, medicine and the manufacture of many things we use every day.

Refrigeration is even more vital if you operate any type of food service business: your livelihood depends on its reliable operation.

Restaurants, bakeries, convenience stores, hotels, catering facilities, cold storage facilities, food products manufacturing, supermarkets, and even medical facilities all require a dependable industrial refrigeration system. When a piece of refrigeration equipment goes down, the clock starts ticking, and if the problem is not solved in a matter of hours, you’re going to be throwing out a great deal of valuable product.

Refrigeration downtime is a complicated problem, but there is one simple way to prevent it: regular maintenance of your industrial refrigeration system.

In your home, you’re probably accustomed to doing routine maintenance to keep things working as they should, from servicing your heating and air conditioning system to weeding your garden. Yet we don’t think about maintaining our home refrigerators and freezers beyond cleaning. An industrial refrigeration system is different. Not only because it gets more usage and endures more wear-and-tear, but because there is a lot more at stake when it fails.

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The food service manager’s nightmare

It goes something like this:

Your commercial kitchen is bustling, yet you have this feeling of impending doom.

You look around for the source of the problem, but everything looks normal.

Then you suddenly realize… your refrigerated display case was making funny noises yesterday. You head over there at a run.

The light is out.

There’s no more funny noise; now it’s deathly quiet.

And your buttercream is drooping and melting like an ice cream cone on a hot day. NOOOOOOO!

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How to Clean Up Your Commercial Refrigeration and Nail that ‘A’ Grade

If you own or manage a restaurant in New York City, you probably have nightmares about the health inspector. You know the one we mean, where he comes in wearing a diabolical grin and slaps a C grade on your front window.

Seriously, even if he comes in smiling pleasantly, your stomach probably does flip-flops. Having the health inspector turn up can be even scarier than having your chef call in sick. You immediately remember all the maintenance tasks you’ve been meaning to take care of, like the low-boy on your cooking line that’s been running too warm. Then you imagine the potentially catastrophic violations that could come as a total surprise: like having to throw out everything in your blast chiller because the temperature is too high. You might even face the closing of your restaurant because of a Condition V critical violation.

Some of the most damaging violations you can receive in an inspection come from food being stored or held at the wrong temperature.

Here’s how poor restaurant HVAC refrigeration service leads to dangerous temperature variations:

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