Most kitchens have too much or too little refrigerated space at the proper locations to meet their needs. In other words, the physical capacity may be adequate, but either it’s not the correct type of refrigerator space or it’s not flexible enough to be used to maximum efficiency. Having the right kinds of refrigeration actually can mean using fewer refrigerators and freezers, an idea that will save energy and money. How do you accomplish this ideal? First, you must decide how much capacity you need. The norm in casual restaurants is to allow 1 to 1.5 cubic feet of refrigerated storage space per meal served. In fine dining, this increases to 2 to 5 cubic feet of space per meal served. You will use a refrigerator not only for storage but to slowly, safely thaw frozen foods 24 to 48 hours before you will need them.
Remember, roughly half of a refrigerator’s total cubic footage is usable space. The rest is taken up by the unit’s insulation and refrigeration system. (Walk-in coolers also contain aisles, which take up room. ) Another handy rule is that, in a reach-in refrigerator, 1 cubic foot of space will hold 25 to 30 pounds of food. Divide the total weight of food you’ll need to store by 25 or 30, and you’ll have a good idea how much cubic footage you will need. Only after you’ve determined your capacity needs can you take the next step: deciding how much floor space you have for refrigeration and what size of unit will fit there. This way, you can calculate how many different units you will need.
The third major step is to look at reach-in, roll-in, and walk-in options. A reach-in refrigerator is similar to the one you have at home: You pull open the door, reach in, and get what you want. In a commercial kitchen, the problem is that the refrigerator door is opened and closed constantly, in heat that’s a lot more intense than a home kitchen. A duct-type system, with louvered air ducts promoting airflow throughout the cabinet, seems to work best to counteract the inevitable blasts of warm air. Inside the refrigerator cabinet, the wise use of space can increase your capacity by 30 to 35 percent. A simple, heavy-duty pull-out shelf system can allow full use of the bottom part of the unit without making employees stoop to retrieve things there.
Typical reach-in units range from a one-section, single door unit with 22.7 cubic feet to a three-section, three-door unit with more than three times the capacity, at 74.7 cubic feet. Total storage capacity depends somewhat on the number of shelves in the unit; and, of course, the number of shelves will depend on the heights of the products you’ll store on those shelves (see Illustration 10-10). They can be custom-sized to fit under counters or in small spaces. There are also convertible reach-ins, basically freezers that can be converted to a refrigerator with the flip of a switch located on the cabinet. Manufacturers offer these in one, two, and three-section units, so you can adjust for more refrigerated space or more freezer space, as needed. Adaptability is the key.
The bigger the food service operation, the greater the need for a roll-in refrigerator. If your operation does a lot of batch cooking, for instance, you will want to have the capability to move large numbers of meals on rolling carts, in and out of refrigerated space. Carts mean less handling, which means less spillage, less heavy lifting, and so forth. A reach-in unit can be converted to a roll-in by using a dolly on which a half or full rack of product is resting. The rack has swivel casters and is latched onto the dolly. If the height of the dolly platform is compatible with the bottom of the refrigerator cabinet, the person holding the dolly can just position it correctly, tip it forward, and slide the rack of product into the refrigerator.
This seems to work best when the reach-in refrigerator is equipped with six-inch legs. The roll-in cabinet is similar to the reach-in except that, instead of 6-inch legs, it has a ramp at floor level so that entire carts can be rolled inside. The floor of the roll-in is stainless steel. Capacities of roll-ins range from 35.3 cubic feet for one-section units to 113.2 cubic feet for three-section units. A pass-through refrigerator is a variation of the standard reach-in. This cabinet has two sets of doors, located opposite each other. Cafeterias and garde manger areas make good use of this special refrigerator, when the kitchen staff places food in one side for servers to pick up at the other.
On the service side, which gets opened more frequently, half doors are recommended to help with temperature control. Another recommendation is to check the temperature of this unit more often for food safety reasons, because it is likely to be warmer with all the activity. Choose glazed glass upper doors for easier product visibility, and consider using shelves in the upper portion of the cabinet and half-height carts in the lower section. This would allow a fully loaded tray of prepared salads, for example, to be transferred as needed from its storage in the lower section into the upper section to await serving. The workflow in your kitchen will help you determine the suitability of a pass-through refrigerator. Other types of specialty refrigerators are made to fit under bars or counters. These are handy in confined areas, particularly around the hot or cold preparation lines. They range in storage capacity from 5.7 to 15.4 cubic feet, with one to three doors.
There are also refrigerated prep tabletops, where 8 to 24 pans can sit on a chilled surface instead of using ice. Lately, these prep tops have come under the scrutiny of health departments for exceeding the maximum 40-degree-Fahrenheit temperature to keep food safely chilled. One solution to this is to install the undercounter refrigerator and the prep top above with separate controls and separate refrigeration units, even though they’re both run by the same compressor. Reach-ins and roll-ins have lots of different doors to choose from. The basic things you’ll have to decide on are whether you want the door to be full height or half height; on hinges or a sliding track; if it’s hinged, what side it opens from; and if the door itself is solid or see through glass.
Most equipment experts frankly prefer hinged doors over sliding ones. The door seal isn’t as tight on sliding doors, and it can be hard to clean the sliding tracks. However, if aisle space is tight, a sliding door can be useful. It takes only half as much standing room to open as a hinged door. In a pass-through refrigerator, use sliding doors only on the servers’ side; having them on both sides lets out too much cold air too fast. The question of a full door or half door is also one of temperature loss. The half door is more energy efficient, especially if the unit is located close to the hot line, but it has the disadvantage of allowing staff to see only half of the contents at a time. Inside the refrigerator, you’ve got to organize the contents well to make half doors work efficiently for you.
When it comes to how the doors will open, give a lot of thought to the flow pattern of the workstations in the area. Open doors cannot help but obstruct the flow, and people should be able to see around them and maneuver around them safely. One manufacturer even boasts the ability to change door hinges on the spot within 30 minutes, a feature that might come in handy. For door hardware, you’ll have a choice of magnetic gasketing with self-closing hinges or positive-action fasteners with standard hinges. Eventually, both will have to be adjusted, although positive-action fasteners seem to require more frequent tweaking. Both are acceptable if the design and installation of the cabinet is sound. A final word about reach-ins and roll-ins, and we’ll move on.
The refrigeration systems can be either air cooled or water cooled, with a heavy-duty (often referred to as a high-torque) condenser, which must be kept clean for the system to work properly. In most food service settings, the air-cooled, self-contained system is used, because a good kitchen ventilation system will be able to remove the heated air given off by the refrigerator. The reason refrigeration experts don’t recommend the water-cooled system for most kitchens is that it requires a water cooling tower.
Although a tower is usually part of the building’s regular air-conditioning system, it must be bigger (and take up more space) to accommodate the added demand that refrigerators would place on the cooling system. No matter which system you choose, correct voltage must be considered before you order or install your refrigerators.
