One Chef Lost An Entire Weekend’s Worth Of Prepped Ingredients Due To A “Broken” Refrigerator A chef I know once lost an entire weekend’s worth of prepped ingredients because a reach-in refrigerator quietly stopped working overnight. Not dramatically, not with a loud bang or a tripped circuit breaker. It just… stopped. By Monday morning, she was staring at $600 in wasted product and a lunch service she couldn’t run. Her words, not mine: “I didn’t think about the fridge until it betrayed me.”
Most food businesses do not realize that they treat their refrigeration equipment as invisible until it fails. When it does fail everything fails with it.
Food safety isn’t a checklist, it’s a gamble every day
The “danger zone” for bacterial growth is between 40°F and 140°F and is a very small margin for error when working within this temperature range. Foods typically stored in refrigeration and potentially become a problem when the cold chain is broken are: Proteins such as beef, pork, poultry, seafood and eggs; Dairy products such as milk, cheese, butter, and ice cream; and Prepared sauces that have been cut, cooked or mixed together. Health inspectors know that all of these potential food items can become contaminated and cause foodborne illness. Your customers on the other hand typically are unaware of these potential problems until they become a problem.
Health inspectors know this but your customers have no idea until it’s too late.
The vast majority of preventable cold-chain failures can be prevented by those who manage restaurants, cafes, delis and caterers if they understand how their refrigeration equipment can fail and complete scheduled maintenance. The silent assumption is that the cold will remain cold. And when it does not, there is not only value lost in and through the spoiled food, but also potential liability, a failed health inspection and long term damage to one’s business, the recovery from which can take months to a year or more.
A warm walk-in cooler means big losses.
This post continues with my thoughts about the silent killer that is poor refrigeration. Most people understand that a warm reach-in is bad for business. Few realize the massive damage that a single failure of a walk-in cooler can have on a restaurant. In large restaurants, the walk-in cooler is often the circulatory system of the kitchen storing produce, prepped foods, and bulk items like portioned desserts stored in pans. A failure in the walk-in can bring down the menu quickly as the kitchen scrambles to find emergency cold storage in the form of same day delivery from suppliers or rent temporary coolers. The lost product can cost the restaurant a significant amount of money.
It is hard for many food businesses to imagine how they could continue to run their kitchens without good quality refrigerators, freezers, walk-in coolers or display cases. If the cold chain is to break then the consequences could be huge – potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of stock lost in hours, not to mention loss of business and potential loss of customer goodwill. When calculating the potential cost of a failure, a chef I know lost an entire weekend’s worth of stock from a faulty reach in refrigerator. He put the cost of the lost food at around $600, but then went on to describe the lost business over the following couple of days. Interestingly, he described the refrigerator’s failure as him being “betrayed” by the fridge. At first this seemed to be an overstatement but then he explained that he hadn’t thought about the fridge until it had failed.
There is also the matter of selecting the proper Commercial Refrigeration equipment for the needs of your operation. Like all of the major pieces of equipment found in restaurants, quality commercial refrigeration is not a luxury that many restaurants can afford. However, this type of refrigeration equipment is a necessary part of any restaurant’s operation. In fact, it is a vital part of a restaurant’s operation, much like a good quality oven or a reliable commercial dishwasher. In addition to serving as a cold storage
Different jobs, different equipment
I only mention this because most food service establishments treat refrigeration with the same respect as they do the trash cans or the back door of the kitchen. They are invisible until they fail and then they receive all of the attention as everything around them fails as well.
Below, we break down each to help you better understand the purpose of each model of refrigerator in your kitchen:
- Walk-in coolers: bulk storage for produce, proteins, dairy, and prepped items — the warehouse anchor of your entire cold chain.
- Reach-in refrigerators: line-accessible units keeping ready-to-use ingredients at service temperature without constant trips to the walk-in.
- Prep refrigeration (sandwich or pizza prep tables): built for active use during prep, with cold storage below and refrigerated rail inserts on top.
- Reach-in freezers and walk-in freezers: long-term holding for proteins, frozen goods, and backup stock.
When we talk about the various types of refrigeration units, it is common for people to mistakenly believe that they can be used for the alternate purposes for which other types of units are designed. They compromise on each of the roles that the different types of units are designed to perform. The inevitable result of this type of compromise is that there will be some gaps in the cold chain. These types of gaps are the types of things that can lead to serious food safety incidents.
1 Waste reduction is where refrigeration quietly pays you back
Waste reduction through solid refrigeration is a great way for your food storage to pay back some of the large initial cost. By extending the life of your raw materials you can reduce your food costs, lowering your food cost percentage (FCP) in high volume restaurants. Your FCP is a number that will make or break your restaurant in the first two years of business.
| Refrigeration quality | Typical produce shelf life | Weekly waste estimate (small kitchen) |
| Aging or inconsistent unit | 3 to 4 days | $150 to $300 |
| Well-maintained commercial unit | 5 to 7 days | $50 to $100 |
| New, properly sized unit | 7 to 10 days | Under $50 |
But all of these problems can pile up rather quickly and become a huge problem in high volume establishments. And reducing a small amount of waste can make a huge difference in your food cost percentage. Remember, your food cost percentage is the number that determines if you will make it through the first two years of operation as a restaurant or not.
Equipment that nobody thinks about until suddenly they do
Most people associate working refrigeration with functioning cold storage. The reality is that most refrigeration units are working 24/7 behind the scenes. No one ever thinks about the refrigeration until it fails. Typically that piece of equipment fails completely. Meaning that when it stops running it stops running for good. There is no in between state of function for a piece of refrigeration equipment. The equipment appears to be functioning 100% when one day it does not.
My chef friend’s worst night was Monday. The reach-in that failed her wasn’t old, she had no idea it was going to fail and it failed at the worst possible time for her. It just stopped.
And so it is with your refrigeration. It seems to be doing just fine until it hasn’t. The reach-in that failed my chef friend last Monday morning was not old equipment. It was not equipment that had been under great stress prior to its demise. It had simply ceased to function at the worst possible time. As she said, “It seems to be doing just fine until it hasn’t.” The unit that “seems fine” is the one that will fail you at 2 AM when you are about to depart for the biggest catering event of the season. This is why reliable refrigeration is not an option. It is the floor of your operation. And as with any floor, when it fails, it all comes crashing down.
