A display case has a harder job than a reach-in. It’s built to show product, with big glass doors or no doors at all, and it sits out where the store’s heat and air conditioning work on it all day. So when one runs warm, the cause can be in the room as much as in the case.
Open multideck and grab-and-go cases
An open case keeps food cold with a curtain of cold air blowing down from the top front and pulled back in through a grille at the bottom. Anything that breaks that curtain warms the shelves. Stocking past the load line (the marking on the sides or shelves) is the big one. So is a box sitting on the return grille, or a ceiling vent blowing across the front of the case.
Inside the case, the usual suspects are an iced coil from a defrost problem and fan motors that have quit, and the honeycomb grille at the top clogs too. Many open cases also run on a remote system with the compressor out back or on the roof, so the problem might not be in the case at all. Night covers help a lot, if the case has them and somebody pulls them down at close.
You can check the air curtain yourself. Hold your hand under the top front edge of the case, and you should feel a steady fall of cold air all the way across. If it’s weak in one section, look for a blocked grille or stock pushed too far forward there.
Cases that plug into the wall have their own condenser behind a bottom grille, and it clogs the same way a reach-in’s does.
Glass-door merchandisers and deli cases
Beverage merchandisers, dairy doors and curved-glass deli cases behave more like a reach-in. Foggy or sweating glass usually means the anti-sweat heaters in the glass or frame have quit, or a door isn’t closing all the way. Water pooling in the bottom of a deli case is usually a clogged drain. On beverage doors, watch for stockers propping them open during a long restock, because the coil can ice up from all that humid air and then the case stays warm for hours after the doors are shut again. Bakery and floral cases are set up differently from a meat or dairy case, so the tech checks what yours is supposed to hold before calling anything broken. If you run a flower shop, our florists page has more on that.
Lights, glass and hinges
Dead lights don’t spoil food, but they make a case look closed. Newer cases use LED strips with a driver that can fail, and older ones have fluorescent tubes and ballasts. If the tech’s already there for something else, it’s an easy add. Cracked glass and broken door hinges can be fixed without replacing the case.
When you call, tell us what kind of case it is and, if you know, whether it has its own compressor or runs off a remote system. Inspectors probe the product in grab-and-go cases, so keep a close eye on one that’s been unreliable. The page on temperature monitoring goes into that.
