Refurbished Commercial Upright Fridges

Work from how often stock is collected rather than from how much of it there is. A single door cabinet suits a cafe or a small kitchen where one person fetches from it. Two and three door cabinets suit a kitchen where several sections draw from the same store through a service.

The other half of the question is traffic. Every door opening lets warm air in, so a kitchen where one big cabinet is opened constantly will often run better split into two smaller ones, with the fast-moving stock in the cabinet nearest the line. In refurbished stock you are choosing from what exists, so start with the door count and let the brand follow.

Solid is the cheaper cabinet to buy, because there is no double glazed panel, no frame carrying it and no display lighting in the price, and back of house nobody is looking through the glass anyway. On running cost we would not claim either way: glass is double glazed and may hold the cold slightly less well than an insulated panel, but staff can see the stock without opening the door, where a solid door gets opened and closed all day and loses some cold air each time, so the overall cost of ownership may still come out lower with glass. For a customer-facing cabinet, look at commercial glass door fridges; for back of house, commercial solid door fridges.

On a used cabinet there is one extra thing to check on glass: the seal between the panes. A door that has lost its seal fogs permanently between the glass and cannot be cleaned, and a replacement door is one of the dearer parts on any cabinet. Ask for a photo of the door with the light behind it if you are buying unseen.

This is the question that catches people, because an upright cabinet is tall, deep and heavy, and a kitchen door is none of those things. Work out the narrowest point on the path — the entry, a corridor, a turn at the top of a ramp, a lift car — and compare it with the depth of the cabinet, not just the width.

Doors, handles and castors can usually come off to win you a few centimetres, and the product page gives the overall dimensions. If the only way in is tight, say so when you order so the delivery can be arranged with enough hands on site rather than discovered on the day.

Open each door fully and let go. It should hold where you leave it or swing closed cleanly, not drop or drag on the frame. A door that no longer sits square is usually a tired hinge or a worn cam, both replaceable, but it can also mean the cabinet has been knocked hard enough to twist the frame, which is not.

Then check the gasket along its whole length, not just at the handle, and look for a flat spot at the bottom corner where most of the wear lands. Ask us what was replaced during the refurbishment rather than what was checked — the answer tells you more about the cabinet than its age does.

They should, and the product page lists what is included. Shelves and runners go missing more often than any other part when a cabinet is decommissioned and moved, so it is worth confirming the count rather than assuming a full set.

If a set is short, shelves for the current trade brands are generally available in Australia, and that is one of the reasons brand matters more on a used cabinet than on a new one. Ask us about the exact model before you order if you need every shelf position filled from day one.

Yes. Silverchef Rent-Try-Buy lets you rent the cabinet instead of paying for it outright, which keeps cash in the rest of the fit-out and makes the payments an operating expense. When you know the cabinet is the right size for the way you actually trade, you can buy it out or move up to a bigger one.

It tends to suit the early months of a new site, where the volume is still a guess and the worst outcome is being locked into a cabinet that turns out to be too small. Refurbished stock and rental are not mutually exclusive — ask us which route is available on the unit you are looking at.

Not if you pick a brand that is still supported and sort the wear items out at the start. A commercial upright cabinet is built to run for many years, and the parts that fail first — gaskets, hinges, fans, thermostats, controllers — are the cheap ones. The expensive risk is a discontinued model nobody makes parts for.

The running cost argument is real but it is mostly in your hands. A clean condenser, the clearance the maker asks for, doors that shut properly and stock loaded cold will do more for the power bill than the year the cabinet was built. Where a cabinet runs flat out and never cycles off, get a refrigeration technician to it before you fill it.