Every business in the F&B industry needs coolers and commercial refrigerator-freezers to store the ingredients, food, and drinks they need to run their operations. These devices help keep food items fresher for longer, ensuring that no spoilage or contamination happens when you store them.

One of the best ways to keep your coolers and freezers in good working order is to keep them well-maintained and serviced. Still, using them correctly is also critical, as making food storage mistakes can hinder your productivity and even ruin your commercial cold room and freezers.

Fortunately, preventing you or your staff from making food storage mistakes is relatively easy. In this article, we will look at a short list of food storage mistakes that can harm your commercial coolers and freezers and what you can do to avoid them.

1. Overstoring Your Coolers And Freezers

Overpacking items into coolers and freezers are a common problem, especially when you've just received new stock. Most coolers and freezers have a fixed storage capacity at which the cooling components can operate efficiently and maintain the interior temperature and airflow. 

Overfilling items in your coolers and freezers may reduce the internal airflow, thus reducing the overall temperature and allowing bacteria and mould to multiply and spread. The best way to avoid this is to not over-purchase supplies and not to exceed the maximum storage capacity of your cooler or freezer.

2. Neglecting To Throw Out Expired Items

You can only keep cooked food and fresh ingredients for so long. Failure to remove expired food from your coolers and freezers not only takes up space for fresher ingredients and new items, but can also affect other food products and lead to mould and bacteria growth within your storage device.

Practising FIFO (first in, first out) will help you to keep track of expiring items and your overall inventory – all you need to do is to place older items out front and new items in the back. This also ensures that any expired items are thrown out when they need to be. 

2. Mixing Different Products Together

While mixing different food items may save on space, it can be detrimental to inventory organisation and keeping foods fresh, especially if you have different items that need to be kept separate, such as fruits and vegetables or cooked and raw foods.

If you can, you should store your food items separately from each other and in their appropriate containers. This can help keep the food fresh for longer and allows your kitchen staff to easily sift through and find the right food items they need.

4. Storing Items At The Wrong Temperature

It is critical to consider the temperature of the coolers and freezers in which your restaurant's food and ingredients are stored – a few degrees above the recommended temperature can lead to bacteria growth and faster spoilage. At the same time, a few degrees too low may negatively affect the taste and quality of the food items. 

As a result, investing in additional commercial refrigeration units is worthwhile to ensure that all of your food remains at the proper temperature. If you own a larger establishment that requires a large amount of food, it may be useful to invest in a cool room to store your food.

5. Not Using The Right Storage Containers

Leaving fresh food items (such as fruits and vegetables) alone in your coolers and freezers can lead to cross-contamination and a much more difficult clean-up if these items expire, especially if they're arranged loosely.

Storing your items in vacuum seal bags or airtight glass food containers can help keep them fresher for longer while keeping them contained within the container itself so that any spoilage does not affect the interior of your cooler or freezer.

6. Not Storing Items In The Appropriate Locations

If you frequently need something from your cooler or freezer, you might be tempted to put it on or near the door for easier access. While this is convenient, the refrigerator door and the storage areas around it are frequently exposed to constant temperature shifts, which may affect the freshness of the items stored there if they are temperature sensitive.

The best thing to do is to designate a section of your refrigerator unit for your more frequently used items (that isn't the door). If you're constantly reaching back into your freezers or coolers for items, it's time to reorganise the space.

Using Your Coolers And Freezers The Right Way

By reducing the number of food storage errors you make for your commercial refrigeration units, you not only have more efficient inventory management system in place for storing food, but you also greatly reduce the likelihood of accidentally damaging your coolers or freezers.

We hope this article has been useful in improving the way you store your food commercially. If you need any advice regarding commercial food refrigeration and storage, contact your local refrigeration experts for more information.