It doesn’t matter whether you’re running a kitchen in a 5-star hotel, a food truck, or anything in between; if you’re in the business of selling or preparing food, you’re going to need a commercial refrigerator. However, if you’ve never shopped for an industrial fridge or simply haven’t had to do so in a while, you might have some trouble choosing between the myriad options on the market. We’ve written before about the pros and cons of using commercial fridges in residential kitchens and well as about how to choose an industrial fridge if you’ve never done so before. Today we’ll take a closer look at the ins and outs of choosing the best commercial fridge for a small business.

The fridge should fit the room (and not the other way around)

While it’s tempting to focus exclusively on the fridge you’re buying, it’s much more important to think of how your facility is arranged and to fit the fridge around the room instead. A good place to start is by examining just how much space you have available; a fridge that takes up too much room won’t leave enough for a freezer unit, your ranges, or dry food storage.

Similarly, you’ll want to review the menu. If your chefs cook with a lot of meat, for example, you might want to prioritize freezer space over fridge space. For keeping fruits and vegetables, you’ll want good control over both temperature and humidity levels.

Think of the workflow in your kitchen. Every restaurant or food business has a particular way in which ingredients are transported from refrigeration elsewhere, whether to the preparation and cooking lines or to the service department. Set your fridge up in a way that makes this process as efficient as possible, not just in terms of getting food out of refrigeration, but also in getting it back in.

Of course, most of the above suggestions have to do with indoor refrigeration. However, if you’re setting up a walk-in unit outdoors, you’ll also want to keep local codes in mind for such a setup, as well as requirements for tornado, hurricane, and other inclement weather situations.

Keep your dimensions (both internal and external) in mind

Once you’ve figured out where you want your fridge and how it makes sense within the operational layout of your business, you’ll also want to double check your measurements to make sure the fridge will actually fit where you need it to go. Remember that you’ll not just need enough space for the external dimensions; you’ll also want at least a few inches around the unit for both airflow once it’s installed and the process of shimmying it into place to begin with. You’ll also want to keep in mind your doorways; you’ll hear of cases where people bought several hundred thousand dollar units for massive warehousing of frozen meats, only to discover that they needed to return them because they were just an inch or two too tall to fit through the doors to the storage rooms. To keep this from happening to you, measure everything that needs measuring before you buy anything.

Beyond your external dimensions, your internal ones are also important to keep in mind. You’ll typically find these dimensions expressed in cubic feet. Think carefully about how much storage you’re likely to need–not just now, but in the future. It’s tempting to underestimate your storage requirements simply to save money, but short term thinking rarely brings the best long term results. It’s always better to buy a bit more space than you think you’ll need in the foreseeable future than less, especially if you either have a growing business or would like to focus on growth in the coming year. Also keep in mind that you can often come across units that share exterior dimensions but have significantly different interior capacities; some designs are simply more efficient than others. Alternatively, it’s often possible to find the same interior capacities in a variety of external dimensions; however, as a rule, you’ll need to open your expense account more to get the same amount of internal storage while reducing external space used, so be ready to spend more for what you want. More broadly, it helps to consider which purchases you make on a recurring basis, the number of customers you’re likely to serve daily, weekly, and monthly, and the amount of money you can afford to spend now vs in the future. As with most business decisions, it’s often simply a question of how much risk you’re willing to take vs. how much stability you’re invested in retaining.

You can buy the WP Restaurant 52″ side by side commercial refrigerator with 49 cubic feet of capacity here on Amazon. Alternatively, you can buy the SABA heavy duty reach-in refrigerator here. For massive capacity, buy the 78″ MBF-8006 72 cubic feet commercial refrigerator here. You can buy the SDI Deals MBF-8002 44.5 cu. ft. commercial freezer here.

Canadians, while the WP and SABA commercial fridges aren’t readily available, you can buy a similar model, the Maxx Cold 49 cubic foot reach-in refrigerator here on Amazon.

If you find our research on PMC helpful, you can follow our efforts to keep maniacally reviewing home appliances by shopping through our links above. We promise to keep fighting the good fight against every horror children, animals, and grown, yet messy humans can inflict upon a clean home.