Commercial Solid Door Fridges

You are not paying for the glass. A display door is a double glazed unit in its own frame, usually with lighting behind it and sometimes a heated element in the pane, and all of that is built into the price. Swap it for a panel of steel and insulation and the cabinet costs less to make, so it costs less to buy.

Running cost is not the reason to choose it. Display glass is always double glazed, so the difference in power between a glass door cabinet and a solid one of the same size is small. Buy solid because the fridge lives somewhere nobody is looking at it, and because it is the cheaper cabinet to buy.

Stand where the fridge is going and work out which way you want the door to open. A right-hinged door carries its hinges on the right and swings open to the right, with the handle on the left. A left-hinged door is the mirror of that.

The usual rule is to hinge the door away from the wall or the corner it sits against, and away from the traffic on the line, so an open door does not block the walkway or trap whoever is loading it. REO offers the True T-11-HC, T-19-HC, T-23-HC and TGN-1R-1S as separate left-hinged and right-hinged models, so pick the swing when you order and check it on the confirmation.

A pass-thru has doors on the front and on the back, so it opens into two rooms or two sides of the same room. A prep cook loads it from the prep side and service takes product out from the line side, and nobody has to walk around the cabinet or squeeze past anybody to do it. It suits a busy pass, a bakery where the make-up bench is behind the counter, and any layout where the same fridge is worked from both sides.

There is a cost to it. A pass-thru has twice as many doors, twice as many gaskets and twice as many chances of one being left open, and it is the dearest cabinet of its size for those reasons. REO offers the True T-23PT-HC as a single door pass-thru.

A half door cabinet splits the front opening in two, so you open half of it at a time instead of the whole thing. Less cold air falls out of a half opening than out of a full height door, which is worth having on a section where somebody is in and out of the fridge all service.

The trade-off is reach. A full height rack or a tall stack of trays will not go through a half opening, so a kitchen moving product on racks is better off with full doors. REO offers the True T-23-2-HC in half doors, and the T-23-1-G-1-HC-FGD01 with one solid half and one glass half.

Enough for the door to open fully and for a person to stand in the opening with a tray in both hands. A swing door on a 1375mm wide two door cabinet wants most of that width clear in front of it, and where the walkway behind is narrow, an open door blocks it for as long as somebody is loading.

Measure the walkway before you commit to a swing door. If the aisle is tight, a door that takes no floor space when it opens is the better answer, and REO offers commercial sliding door fridges for exactly that problem.

Measure the doorway, the corridor, the corner at the top of the ramp and the lift before you order. The True reach-ins REO offers stand 1786mm to 1991mm high, run from 487mm wide on the slimline single door up to 1375mm on the two door, and the two door is 750mm deep.

Height catches people out more often than width. A cabinet close to 2 metres tall will not tip through a low doorway on a trolley, and a fridge halfway down a corridor is very hard to turn around. Tell us if the access is tight when you order, so the delivery can be planned around it.

R290 is propane used as a refrigerant. Its global warming impact is a tiny fraction of the older gases, which is why most new commercial cabinets have moved across to it, and the True reach-ins REO offers run on it.

Day to day it changes almost nothing for the venue. The charge in a self-contained cabinet is small and sealed, and the fridge arrives ready to plug in. It matters at service time, because the mechanic has to be licensed and equipped for hydrocarbons. Do not let a fridge be repaired by somebody who is not set up for the gas inside it.

Hinges and door closers, because a solid door is heavy. There is a slab of insulation inside it and staff pull on the handle a few hundred times a day, so the hinge pins and the cam that pulls the door shut wear before most other parts. A door that no longer closes itself the last few centimetres is the first sign of it.

Gaskets are the other one, and they are a wear and tear component on any fridge. Both are cheap parts next to the compressor they protect, and a door that is not sealing makes that compressor run far longer than it should. Ask us for the part numbers on the exact model and keep a spare gasket on the shelf.

Label the shelves and keep the same product in the same place every time. In a back of house cabinet that is all it takes, and it is why solid doors are normal in prep areas and store rooms.

Where somebody genuinely needs to see in, the True T-23-1-G-1-HC-FGD01 is a middle option with one solid half door and one glass half door, and REO offers full glass door uprights as well.

Walk all four sides before the pallet is broken down, open and shut every door, and look hard at the top edge and the corners, because a reach-in is tall and the top is what a forklift or a low doorway catches.

Do not sign the docket until you have looked. 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. Photograph the wrapping and the pallet as well as the cabinet, and send the photos in with the report.

The True solid door reach-ins REO offers carry a 5 year warranty. The exact terms are shown on each product page and depend on the model, so read them there before you order.

Warranty is the part of the price worth arguing about. A longer term takes the parts and labour risk off you for longer, and on a fridge that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that risk is real money. Ask us for the warranty term on anything you are comparing a True cabinet against.