Refrigeration lineup planning: reach-ins, undercounters, and prep tables

Plan your refrigeration lineup around one principle: cold product should live within a step or two of where it gets used. The walk-in is your warehouse; reach-ins, undercounters, and prep tables are your point-of-use stock. Map each station's ingredients for a peak shift, then place enough refrigeration at each station to hold them. Choose reach-ins for shared bulk access, undercounters where floor space is tight, and refrigerated prep tables where staff assemble to order. Get the map right first. The spec details, doors, condenser location, and duty rating, come second and are covered below.

Start with a station map

Walk your menu through the kitchen. For each station, list what must stay cold during service and how often someone would otherwise walk to the walk-in. Every trip you eliminate is labor saved and food held at safer temperatures. Many kitchens discover they need less total capacity than they assumed, but distributed differently: a small undercounter at the grill beats another door on a distant reach-in.

Match the form to the job

Reach-ins hold shared and bulk items in full, half, or triple-door widths. Undercounters tuck under work surfaces and put cold storage directly beneath the task. Prep tables combine a refrigerated base with a rail of pans up top for sandwich, pizza, and salad assembly. Worktop units add a usable cutting surface. Drawers, in any of these, outperform doors for line cooks pulling portioned product, because they present everything at a glance without bending into a cabinet.

Spec for the environment it lives in

A refrigerator on a hot cookline works far harder than one in a cool prep room. Ask whether a unit is rated for hot ambient conditions before you park it next to a fryer. Condenser location matters too. Bottom-mount condensers pull cooler, cleaner air and put the coldest shelf at working height, but they sit near flour and grease at floor level. Top-mount condensers stay cleaner in dusty areas but ingest the hottest air in the room. There is no universally right answer, only a right answer for each spot on your floor.

Doors, gaskets, and the small stuff

Solid doors hold temperature best. Glass doors sell product and speed finding, at some efficiency cost. Half doors cut cold-air spill every time someone grabs one item. Whatever you choose, gaskets and hinges are the wear parts: ask how easily gaskets replace and keep spares. Casters make cleaning behind and under units realistic, and cleaning is what keeps condensers breathing. Put coil cleaning on a monthly calendar. Most premature refrigeration failures we see trace back to a clogged condenser coil.

Plan power and service before delivery

Each unit needs its own receptacle on adequate circuits, and cords rarely reach as far as drawings assume. Confirm electrical locations with your contractor early, and check local requirements with your code official. Then ask the service question: who works on this equipment in your area, and how fast? A prep table full of product has a short clock when it fails on a Friday.

Zink Foodservice represents one of the industry's most complete offerings across eight Great Lakes states, with refrigeration lines covering every form above. Our team helps operators and dealers build a lineup that matches the station map, and operators purchase through their foodservice dealer. Call 800.492.7400 with questions.

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