1 Door Bar Fridges

A single door under counter refrigerator made for the back of a bar. The cabinet sits at counter height, the door opens onto shelves of bottles and cans, and the whole unit is shallower front to back than a kitchen upright because bar joinery rarely has the depth for one.

The same piece of equipment is sold as a back bar fridge, a back bar cooler or an under counter fridge depending on the brand. The AG Equipment R200V is described as an under bench fridge and does the same job in the same space.

One service point, worked by one person. A coffee cart, a small wine bar, a function room servery, a takeaway counter, or a second cabinet at the far end of a bar where the main run is somewhere else.

Count the staff serving at once, not the covers. A queue at the fridge door is one of the quiet reasons drink service slows down, and it costs more than the price difference between cabinets. If two people pour at the same time, the size to look at is a 2 door bar fridge.

Usually, but confirm it on the product page before delivery day. Most single door bar fridges are self contained and take a standard 10 amp plug. A 15 amp plug has a wider earth pin, so a 10 amp socket will not accept it and the site needs a 15 amp outlet installed first.

Put the fridge on its own circuit if the switchboard allows it. Bar circuits end up carrying a glasswasher, a till and a coffee machine, and a compressor pulls a surge every time it starts. A loaded circuit trips overnight when nobody is there to reset it, and you find out in the morning.

Enough for the condenser to move air, and the figure is on the product page. A self contained cabinet draws air in and pushes it out through a grille, usually low at the front or out the back. Joinery, a plinth or a stack of empties across that grille traps the heat in the cavity and it gets drawn straight back in.

The AG Equipment R200V is a ventilated cabinet, so air movement around it is part of how it is meant to run. If the bar is still being built, tell the joiner where the grille sits before the cabinetry is made. Cutting a vent into a finished bar front afterwards is an expensive repair.

Ask us before you order. Door swing decides where the bartender stands and whether an open door blocks the walkway behind the bar, and with one door there is no second one to work around. Some cabinets come with a reversible hinge and some are handed at the factory.

Settle the swing while the bar layout is still on paper. In a narrow service well a door that opens into the run gets shoved past a hundred times a night, and that wear shows up in the hinge and the gasket long before anything else.

When a second person serves at the same time, or when somebody has to restock the cabinet while the bar is trading. Two doors give two staff a bay each and roughly double what is on hand before someone walks to the coolroom.

Volume counts as well as headcount. A single door cabinet opened every twenty seconds through a Friday night is working far harder than the same unit in a cafe, because every opening lets warm air in and the compressor has to pull the temperature back down.

Bar fridges are rated for drinks, and the temperature band each cabinet holds is shown on its product page. Set it from that figure and check it with your own probe thermometer, because the cabinet display reads the air near its own sensor and that is not always what the bottles are doing.

For food, read the rating first. Australian food safety rules want cold food at or below 5 degrees, and a cabinet set up for bottles may not be sitting there. If food and drinks both have to live under the bar, buy a unit rated for food storage or put the food in a separate under bench fridge.

Airflow, most of the time. The condenser sheds the heat the fridge pulls out of the bottles, and a blocked grille leaves that heat sitting in the cavity where it gets drawn back through the machine. The compressor then runs almost constantly and still loses ground on a hot afternoon.

The other two causes are a door left ajar and a tired gasket. Shut the door on a strip of paper and tug it. If it pulls out with no drag the seal has gone hard and needs replacing. Gaskets are wear and tear components that need to be replaced periodically, and they cost very little next to the cabinet.

Warm water and detergent on a soft cloth, inside and out. Bleach and abrasive pads pit stainless steel and leave marks that never come out, so keep both away from it. Take the shelves out and wash them separately, and dry the gasket instead of leaving it damp.

Brush or vacuum the condenser fins on a schedule with the power off. Behind a bar the fins collect dust, lint and sugar from spilled mixers, and a furred condenser is the usual reason a cabinet starts running warm. Wipe spilt drink out of the inside the same night, because sugar sets hard and works its way into the door seal.

Check the unit for transit damage as soon as it arrives and tell us within 24 hours. Not two days, not two weeks. REO offers a 24-hour replacement guarantee on transit damage, and it only applies if you tell us inside that window.

Get the wrapping off while the driver is still there if you can, and look at the door, the hinge side, the corners and the plinth. Photograph the carton and the pallet as well as the cabinet, and send the photographs through with your order number.

Judge it on best value for money over the life of the cabinet, which means the longest warranty and the lowest total cost of ownership, not the lowest price on the day. A fridge that runs for years on nothing more than a gasket and a condenser clean costs less in total than a cheaper unit that needs a compressor in its third year. Ask us for the warranty term on the exact unit. Williams sits at the premium end of the bar fridges REO offers, and Thermaster and FED-X are the ones to look at further down, because their warranty and after-sales support are unbeatable for that price point.

There is more than one way to pay for it. Through Silverchef Rent-Try-Buy you rent the cabinet instead of buying it outright, the rental payments go through as an operating expense, and the cash stays in the rest of the fit-out. Once the bar has traded for a while you can buy the fridge out or move up to a bigger unit.