The cook line is about the worst place you could put a refrigerator, and it’s exactly where a restaurant needs a few. Reach-ins and chef bases there pull in air from the hottest, greasiest part of the building. Their condenser coils get coated fast. Once that happens the unit runs longer and longer to hold temperature. If a line cooler creeps up during dinner and recovers by morning, check the condenser first. Shine a flashlight behind the bottom grille and you’ll see it.
Sandwich and pizza prep tables are trickier. The rail where the pans sit is the hardest spot in the kitchen to keep at 41 F, and an hour with the lid up makes it worse. If the rail runs warm while the cabinet underneath holds fine, mention that on the phone so the tech can narrow it down before showing up. Prep table repairs have their own page.
When the walk-in is warm
Most warm walk-ins come down to a door that isn’t sealing, an evaporator coil packed with ice, a dirty or tripped condensing unit, or a refrigerant leak. You can check the door yourself. Look for a torn gasket along the bottom and a closer that doesn’t pull the door all the way shut. On a freezer, a door that sticks to the frame usually means the heater wire in the jamb has quit.
If it’s warm and you’re open tonight, keep the door shut and move the expensive proteins into a reach-in that’s holding. Write down the box temperature every half hour or so. The rest is in what to do in the first hour.
Call our office and you’ll have an arrival window before you hang up.
Ice machines
Restaurant ice machines scale up and get slimy faster than most people expect, especially near the dish area with steam and food in the air. Slow production and cloudy cubes are usually a cleaning issue before they’re a parts issue. Ice counts as food under the health code, so an inspector may look inside the bin. Go by the manufacturer’s cleaning interval to start; our ice machine cleaning guide goes through it.
Every repair gets a written price before work starts. And if a unit is old enough that fixing it doesn’t make sense, we’ll tell you, along with what replacing it would cost.
Some kitchens would rather have coils cleaned and doors checked every few months on a maintenance schedule.
