Salad bar fridges are another versatile, uniquely designed commercial fridge with the express purpose of ensuring you’re delivering the freshest salads to your customers. They come with a host of benefits and features, including improving efficiency, food quality and hygiene. 

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 also ensure your ingredients are kept at the optimal temperature for freshness and flavour. At the end of each day, they’re incredibly easy appliances to clean out, ensuring they’re sanitised and ready for the next day. This not only reduces your labour hours spent on cleaning but also reduces food spoilage, saving you stock and money in the long run. 

Each model of salad bar fridge will have slightly different features. However, tthere are a number of common elements that help to keep your produce crisp and fresh while also reducing the chances of contamination. 

When it comes to ensuring the freshness of your food, features like automatic defrosting ensure consistent temperatures and optimal cooling performance. 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. 

To ensure hygiene, stainless steel construction facilitates easy cleaning and sanitisation 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 key menu offerings, you may want to opt for 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. 

To get the most life out of your salad bar fridge and get the best return on investment, regular cleaning and maintenance are essential. 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 keep everything fresh and properly chilled and at the right level of humidity. 

To keep your greens fresh, crisp and looking and tasting their best, keep them at around 4℃, with a maximum of 5℃ before you start to compromise their quality. When you buy a 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! With their reliable chilling, individual compartments and easy access, you can use a bar fridge for menu items other than salads. Whether you want to display and store things like cold-cut meats, desserts, and fruit or have a designated station for specific dietary needs, they’re the perfect way to enhance your menu offering. 

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 tofo 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 salad bar fridge 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. However, you may want to check their condition before serving to ensure optimal freshness and quality for your customers.