Commercial fridge buying guide for London restaurants

If you're fitting out a London restaurant kitchen, refrigeration usually eats 15-25% of the equipment budget and is the single biggest source of running cost (after staff). Get it right and you'll save thousands a year on energy and waste. Here's the practical buying guide.

The five-piece commercial refrigeration setup

1. Upright double-door fridge, bulk storage of cooked product, dairy, prepped ingredients. Plan for one cubic metre per 50 covers.
2. Undercounter fridge, under the prep line, holds the day's mise en place at chef's hand.
3. Glass display fridge, for desserts, drinks, anything customers see before ordering.
4. Blast chiller, HACCP requirement for anything cooked and held. Drops core temp from 70°C to 3°C in 90 minutes.
5. Walk-in cold room, only if you're doing 200+ covers a day or running serious volume.

What to spend more on, what to spend less on

Spend more on: the blast chiller (cheap ones break and breaking one means losing a service), the upright (this runs 24/7 for 10+ years, energy bill matters), the compressor on any walk-in.

Spend less on: undercounter fridges (the cheap ones are fine; they fail every 5 years anyway), display fridges for back-of-house, ice machines (commodity).

The energy bill maths

A 600L upright fridge running 24/7/365 at typical commercial electricity rates (~28p/kWh in 2026) costs about £350-£500/year to run depending on efficiency class. A class A unit vs a class C unit saves you roughly £150/year. Over a 10-year life, that's £1,500, usually more than the price difference.

The HACCP fact you'll wish you knew

Your refrigeration kit needs to log temperatures. Either pay the £40/month for a wireless monitor with cloud logging, or train your kitchen team to check and log temperatures twice daily. Most fail-points on EHO inspections are missing logs, not bad fridges.

Need help speccing?

If you'd like our team to spec your kitchen refrigeration based on your menu and covers count, send your floor plan to info@becoolrefrigeration.co.uk or ring 0203 488 1889. We've fitted refrigeration into London restaurants since 2004.