coldstorageconsultant

Regardless of why you need to use cold storage, it is important to understand that there is no one-size fits all approach. Sadly, in this economy people easily fall victim to lack of details when they are shopping for refrigeration.

In general most sizing and pricing is provided to keep cold things cold with the footprint of the box driving the horsepower of the refrigeration selection. Sometimes that works. When it doesn’t it’s difficult to undo without a lot of expense and hassle.

Here is a perfect example: I ran into a franchisee who was fed up with Brand X because in his last store it ‘just wasn’t working’ ‘…their quality has gone down hill’. He threw me their quote and said please quote this. Fortunately, I realized that there must be more to the story. I know Brand X and it’s not always as simple as that. After asking some probing questions, I discovered that his pizza operation at the current location is busier than most. His staff produces 1200 lbs of dough a day. The box size is the same at both stores. At first he was a bit frustrated with my questions but as we progressed he realized why they were relevant. It turns out that the 1200lbs of dough per day was really 1200lbs produced in 60lb batches, every 7 – 10 minutes. That means he was putting 60 pounds of WARM dough into the box every ten minutes over 3.3 hours. That represents LOAD and dramatically affects the size of the refrigeration system required. Of course there is more to the discovery process like: What temperature does it enter at? What temperature does it need to get to and how long do you have to get there?

The moral of the story is that you really have to take product type, capacity, incoming temperature, volume, etc., into consideration when determining what you need to buy. The amount of ingredients it takes to top a 16″ pizza is a lot different than what it takes to top a 12″ pizza and if that is not taken into consideration in the business modeling process it can have a dramatic impact on your net results.