Why managers lose sight of fridge bars and bottle coolers

Business bar and restaurant managers have a lot on their plates, and most of them will rightly prioritise food hygiene and customer safety. When it comes to staying on top of fridge and freezer maintenance, the focus is understandably on kitchen appliances. After all, a warm fridge or freezer could quickly become a health risk with serious legal and consumer safety implications.

In contrast, bar fridges and bottle coolers don't fall under food safety protocols and environmental health inspections are not required. While nobody wants to serve a customer a warm beer on a hot day, Front of House fridges are often neglected.

In some cases, bar fridges even get missed off the cleaning schedule. While bar fridge seals (gaskets) don't attract as much grease and food debris as kitchen fridges and freezers, dirt will accumulate over time, affecting the integrity of the material.

The silent energy guzzlers eating into your profits

These abandoned appliances become an expensive blind spot to the business. Even our individual business customers can have several bar refrigerators and single door bottle coolers on the go. With dozens of premises, chains and groups can face eye-watering energy bills.
The physics and economics are quite simple. An inefficient door seal does a poor job of keeping warm, humid air from seeping into the bar fridge. This means that the cooling cycle is triggered more frequently. The biggest energy drain of any fridge or freezer is the compressor, so the longer this is running, the more electricity that appliance uses.

Further issues with old and worn bar fridge door seals

Extra opex is not the only consequence of ignoring your bar fridge and bottle cooler seals. An overworked compressor will simply wear out a lot sooner than one kept within its standard operating range. You should expect an efficient fridge to give you over 10 years service. You could be knocking 4-5 years off that lifespan by ignoring the state of your door seals. Multiply that extra capital expenditure across all of your sites, and the value of caring for your gaskets should be clear.

And don't forget the less obvious effect on customer satisfaction. If your restaurant or bar becomes known as 'the one that always serves warm beer or flat tonic', your business could lose footfall.

Gasket Guy offers an elegant solution

We know how much of a headache it can be to source fridge door seals for multiple premises, so we've streamlined our processes and service offering to take away all the hassle.
First, as a well-stocked British-based business, we can often completely remove the inconvenience and expense of multiple middle men, global shipping and customs procedures. With one point of contact, communicating with us is easy too.

Second, we have carefully designed our website to simplify and speed up the sourcing process. You or your managers have several ways you can narrow down your search and send in your gasket measurements to our team.

Third, we can manufacture obsolete and hard to find gaskets here in the UK, fitting them directly where necessary.

But perhaps our most cost and time-saving feature is our inspection and Asset Register Service.

When we do our site inspections, we don’t just focus on food refrigeration; we check all Back of House and Front of House fridges too. We can then set up an Asset Register to track all of your appliances, replacing obscure model numbers with a simple ID number that managers or procurement teams can use to quickly order a replacement seal. We will also pro-actively reach out when your gaskets are reaching the end of their natural lifespan.

We recommend you check in with your site managers today and ensure they are protecting your profits by caring for those front-of-house bar fridge seals.

To find out more about how we work with large exposure businesses like yours, visit our dedicated groups and chains page.