Refurbished Display Equipment

Where they are matters more than how many there are. A customer standing at your counter sees the front glass, the front rail, the lit shelves and the top edge, and those are the surfaces to be fussy about. The back, the sides against a wall, the underside and the plinth are surfaces nobody ever looks at, and a scratch or dent there costs you nothing.

Call us before you order and we will tell you which face the damage is on and whether the cabinet will look tired or as new from the customer side. Two cabinets can be priced much the same when one has a dent on a back corner and the other has a chip in the front glass, and they are not the same buy.

Look for three things: chips, deep scratches and misting. Chips and scratches are cosmetic, but they sit directly in the customer's eye line. On curved glass they matter more, because a curved panel is made for that model and can be slow and expensive to replace. Straight panels are much easier to source.

Ask about misting between the panes. Double-glazed display glass has a sealed gap, and when the seal fails moisture gets in and fogs it permanently. It will not clear with cleaning and it makes the food look grey. It does not stop the cabinet working, so it can be a fair buy at the right price, but find out before you put the cabinet at the front of a shop.

Good lighting makes the food look better, so check that it works the full length of the cabinet. Most of these cabinets run LED strips, which are replaceable at a sensible cost, so a dead section is a fixable fault rather than a reason to walk away. Colour matters as much as brightness — warm light suits cakes, pastry and meat, and cold white light makes them look flat.

Shelves go missing and get broken more often than any other part of a display cabinet. Glass shelves, brackets and trays are model-specific, so ask us what a full set costs before you buy rather than after.

On heated and refrigerated food displays the same applies to gastronorm pans. Buy the pans from the same supplier as the cabinet, because slight differences between brands mean a cross-brand pan may not seat properly.

Open multi-deck cabinets sell more, because there is nothing between the customer and the food. They cost noticeably more to run, and they are sensitive to draughts and to air conditioning blowing across the front. On a hot day in a hot shop the air curtain cannot hold the cold air in, so the compressor runs almost constantly and the top shelf drifts warm. If you buy open, keep the air curtain clean and never let anyone stack product above the load line.

Glass door cabinets hold temperature far better and cost less to run, at the price of a customer having to open a door. Open display usually wins for drinks and grab-and-go in a busy shop, but buy doors for product you are holding for hours, or for a site that gets hot in summer.

Curved front glass is the traditional patisserie and deli shape. It gives a wide clear view of the top shelf and hides the join lines, but it is harder to clean into the curve, and a replacement panel is a specific part for that model.

Square glass is quicker to wipe down, cheaper and easier to replace if it gets knocked, and it suits a modern fit-out. It also sits neatly alongside other square cabinets if you are building a run along a counter. Both shapes are available in cake, deli and hot food cabinets, so decide on the look before you start comparing sizes.

A heated display cabinet uses dry heat, usually with a little humidity, and suits product that is already cooked and packaged or plated — pies, pastries, roast chickens, hot sandwiches. A bain marie holds gastronorm pans in a heated well and suits wet food such as curries, sauces and anything that would dry out under dry heat.

Pies go soggy in a bain marie and curries crust over in a dry cabinet, and it shows within an hour. If you serve both, run a heated glass display for the pastry side and a bain marie behind it for the hot meals. Roband, Woodson, Bonvue, Benchstar and Apuro all offer heated display cabinets.

Yes, if it is the right size for the job and stood in the right place. Refrigerated displays are built to hold food that is already cold, not to bring it down, so load chilled product into a cabinet that has already reached temperature. Give the condenser air, keep the vents at the base clear, and do not push the cabinet hard against a wall unless the manufacturer says you can.

Then look at where it stands. Direct sun through a shop window, a doorway propped open all day, or an air conditioning vent blowing across the front will each pull a display off temperature, and an open cabinet feels all three far more than a closed one. If the only spot available is by the front door, buy a glass door model.

Yes to the warranty. The terms are shown on each product page and depend on that unit's condition, history and age, so a cabinet that spent six months on a showroom floor will not carry the same cover as one that has done years in a bakery.

On parts, the brands REO offers most in display cabinets — Bonvue, Thermaster, Anvil, Atosa, Polar, Roband, Woodson and Bromic — are all supported in Australia, so lights, fans, controllers, gaskets and shelves are normally straightforward. Glass is the exception. Ask about a replacement panel before you buy if the cabinet is going somewhere it might get knocked, because glass is the part most likely to be model-specific and slow to arrive.

Refurbished is the cheapest way into a good-looking counter, and REO prices display cabinets sharply. A curved glass cake cabinet that is a serious spend new can be very reasonable refurbished, and a customer looking at it cannot tell how old it is.

If you would rather keep the cash in the fit-out, Silverchef Rent-Try-Buy lets you rent the cabinet and claim the payments as an operating expense. That works well with a display cabinet, because the right size only becomes obvious after a few months of trading. Once you know what you are actually selling, you can buy the cabinet out or step up to a bigger model.