Hot Weather Advice for Catering Equipment

With Summer in full swing and record temperature expected in the next few days (at the time of writing!), your catering equipment can come under increased pressure to maintain its optimal performance. Our procurement manager, John, provides his 10 top tips to help the performance of your catering equipment during periods of hot weather.

To help your catering equipment during periods of hot weather, taking the following steps might help:

1. Leave your kitchen canopies on all night when the weather is hot. This will draw cooler air in during the night and cool the unit as well as removing warm air generated by refrigeration plant.

2. Where possible, overnight pull fridges and freezers a few inches away from the wall to allow air to circulate.

3. Minimise the frequency of opening and closing fridge and freezer doors.

4. Work with your supply chain to ensure that new food stock is pre-chilled, and does not require further cooling once it reaches you.

5. Do not prop fridge/freezer doors open during goods loading.

6. Use counter top electric fans to help circulate air around refrigeration.

7. Check air grilles are not obstructed by boxes or equipment.

8. Doors can be open as long as fly screens are still in place.

9. Do not block cold air fans and grilles inside your fridge or freezer with product or boxes.

10. If you have external cold room / freezer room motors, a locally erected solar shade can improve performance.

Remember, if you are struggling or experiencing difficulties with your current equipment, or simply require some additional equipment to help you through the summer, we have a large range of catering equipment available for short and long term hire. In particular this includes refrigeration equipment and cold rooms.

John has worked at PKL for over 17 years and is PKL Purchasing Manager. John is responsible for sourcing the equipment and spares for PKL’s hire fleet of 55,000 items of catering equipment, and also procures catering equipment for the Rental+ division. Having also worked in our technical support and catering equipment engineering departments for a number of years, there’s not much John doesn’t know about commercial catering equipment, both in terms of how it works and how to keep it running, and what equipment is best for our customers’ requirements.

Looking for Refrigeration Equipment?

We have a huge range of fridges, freezers, blast chillers, cold rooms and freezer rooms available to hire. If you’re looking to rent refrigeration equipment, use the links below to start browsing our range.