If you have outsourced management of your corporate cafeteria, there’s one aspect that may be a gray area: who is responsible for cafeteria equipment maintenance? Is it your cafeteria management company or your facilities management team? If you’re not sure who’s taking care of it, the answer might be nobody.
If kitchen and refrigeration equipment maintenance is neglected, that’s going to increase your costs and reduce the quality of service. Learn more about what needs to be done, and the risks of letting those tasks fall through the cracks.
5 risks from neglected cafeteria equipment maintenance
1. Failing health and safety inspections
If the refrigeration equipment in your corporate cafeteria is not regularly cleaned and inspected, it can develop problems that cause the temperature to rise to unsafe levels. For example, dirty gaskets can prevent the doors from closing properly. Or inadequate air flow can reduce the cooling capacity.
Your health inspector will spot this problem immediately, and you could end up with a reduced health and safety grade or a violation.
Learn more: How to Clean Up Your Commercial Refrigeration and Nail that ‘A’ Grade
2. Contaminated ice
Ice machines are notorious for being common sources of food contamination. If they are not regularly cleaned by experts using proper tools and cleaners, chances are your ice is harboring bacteria. It’s NOT enough to dump the ice and clean the bin.
Learn more: Bacteria in Ice: Think Your Restaurant’s Ice Is Safe?
3. Unsafe food
If your refrigeration equipment is not cooling adequately, it doesn’t take long for the food to become unsafe for your customers to consume. How long before someone gets sick? Then you have a much bigger problem on your hands.
4. Breakdowns that impact operation
Equipment that’s dirty and neglected breaks down more often and doesn’t last as long. Here’s just one example: greasy buildup on the coils of refrigeration boxes hinders the cooling process. Eventually they can’t hold the temperature. As they run longer trying to reach set temperatures, that puts a strain on the compressor. Eventually it will burn out.
According to Murphy’s Law, that will happen during your busiest lunch shift.
5. Higher operating costs
Poor operation of refrigeration and kitchen equipment leads to quicker spoilage and wasted food. That’s one of the biggest avoidable expenses in food service. Properly caring for commercial refrigeration equipment can help you take back your inventory and save money.
Neglected cafeteria equipment maintenance also adds to the costs of equipment repairs and replacements.
Learn more: Commercial Refrigeration: Tips to Reduce Food Waste
What maintenance tasks are needed (and who should do them)
Cafeteria equipment maintenance includes daily, weekly, and periodic tasks to keep all equipment clean and functioning properly. That includes both hot-side kitchen equipment maintenance and refrigeration equipment maintenance.
Some of these tasks can be done by kitchen staff or facilities staff. But some require specialized knowledge and equipment.
Cleaning refrigeration units & kitchen equipment
Your kitchen staff can do daily and weekly cleaning to keep all equipment items in the best possible condition.
For specialized cleaning tasks (like ice machines, door gaskets, and refrigeration coils), you need a professional kitchen and refrigeration maintenance team who have the skills, tools, and procedures to do the job effectively.
Inspections
Your staff should be regularly checking the temperatures of coolers, refrigerators and freezers and reporting any problems.
At least quarterly, your refrigeration maintenance team needs to test the operation of compressors, fans, motors, gaskets, thermostats and more. Identifying and fixing cooling issues as they happen helps to prevent all the risks we reviewed above.
Tuneups
When a refrigeration technician inspects your equipment, they will be able to see parts that are worn and nearing the end of their life. Proactively replacing parts can prevent breakdowns and equipment failure that cost you more money and disrupt operation of your corporate cafeteria.
Learn more: Commercial Refrigeration Maintenance Checklist
Take ownership of kitchen & refrigeration equipment maintenance in NYC
Establish a maintenance schedule. Find out the maintenance frequency requirements for each piece of equipment in your commercial kitchen. Assign in-house tasks to your kitchen and/or facilities staff, and establish a relationship with experts for the rest.
Consider the big picture. Did you know that the operation of your HVAC system can impact the efficiency and effectiveness of refrigeration equipment? That’s why you need to partner with a service provider that’s knowledgeable about refrigeration, HVAC and kitchen equipment.
Learn more: 5 Reasons to Combine your HVAC & Refrigeration Repair Services
If you’re in NYC, you can trust Arista’s experts to get it right. Contact us today.
