Commercial Salad Bar Fridges

A salad bar fridge is a commercial fridge built to hold made-up salad ingredients at the counter rather than in the cold room, which is faster to serve from and easier to keep clean.

With both open, self-serve salad fridges for customers to use themselves and options with glass windows for staff-serving, they display your ingredient options in an appealing way. This design also helps to make serving faster, allowing you to get through greater customer numbers for those high-turnover lunch hours.

Commercial refrigerated salad bars hold ingredients at the temperature that keeps them crisp. At the end of each day the trays come out to be washed and sanitised, so the fridge is ready for the next morning.

Each model of Commercial Salad Bar Fridges will have slightly different features. However, there are a number of common elements that help to keep your produce crisp and fresh while also reducing the chances of contamination.

Automatic defrost keeps the temperature steady. Many models also come with hoods or lids to help keep the ingredients evenly surrounded by cool air, with easy access when you need to prepare food.

For hygiene, stainless steel wipes down and sanitises easily at the end of each shift. For models designed for staff to serve customers, sneeze guards protect the stock while still clearly displaying everything.

In order to choose the best-size salad fridge for your cafe or restaurant, you’ll need to consider three things. Look at your average turnover, how much storage space you need and what your menu looks like.

If salads are one of your main menu lines, you may want a larger salad bar fridge. Consider both where it’ll be placed and how many ingredients you want to stock on any given day. If salads are an add-on or used as a base for other meals you prepare, a smaller model may be adequate.

After a shift has ended, any remaining ingredients that you want to keep will be best stored in a fridge for the next day. It is important to account for adequate room in your fridge for any leftovers so you can reduce food waste.

Clean it at the end of every shift and it will last longer. At the end of each shift, remove any remaining ingredients and either store them or dispose of them. Then, sanitise all the containers or put removable, dishwasher-safe parts in to be cleaned. You’ll also need to change the water in the pans, preferably before use, so it can cool down adequately to hold everything fresh and properly chilled and at the right level of humidity.

To keep your greens fresh, crisp and looking and tasting their best, hold them at around 4℃, with a maximum of 5℃ before you start to compromise their quality. When you buy a Commercial Salad Bar Fridge, you’ll find a digital, easily adjustable thermostat that allows you to precisely adjust and control the temperature of your produce.

Yes. The trays suit cold-cut meats, desserts and fruit as well as salad, and a separate station is a simple way to handle particular dietary needs.

Depending on the size you choose and how many individual trays you have in the model you opted for, you can arrange your produce in a number of ways. We recommend laying it out in sequential order, starting with your base ingredients on one side, followed by additional vegetable ingredients, toppings and even sauces or protein like meat or tofu towards the end.

This creates a logical flow for customers or your staff to follow while also reducing the chances of accidentally mixing ingredients that you’d prefer to keep separate.

How long your produce will last will depend on how you’ve prepared it and the nature of the individual ingredients themselves. While your Commercial Salad Bar Fridges will offer a consistent and reliable temperature, more delicate things like leafy greens will usually last a maximum of three days before they need to be disposed of. Firmer vegetables, such as those that are usually served whole, like cherry tomatoes, or retain their shape and water content, will last longer. Check their condition before serving either way.

You will see commercial salad bars and refrigerated salad bars commercial used for the same kind of equipment. The name changes with the supplier and the region, not the job it does. Compare models on capacity, construction and the specification on each product page, and check the full commercial salad bar fridges range to see every option side by side.