Refrigeration Hygiene Tips For Longer-Lasting Perishables
For many commercial businesses, refrigeration is a necessity for smooth day-to-day operations. Proper refrigeration hygiene is crucial to ensure perishable items stay fresh up until the point of sale, which can be days or even weeks after the goods are purchased.
Whether you are a food business, a florist, or mortuary, not having the right refrigeration hygiene to optimise the length of time perishables last can be detrimental to your business. Cost of goods can be one of the highest costs for a business, so if items spoil before their time, this can be detrimental… not to mention pose a huge risk to the health and safety of your customers!
In this article we dive into some of our top tips to optimise your refrigeration hygiene, ensuring your decay-able items stand the test of time.
Maintaining the Right Temperature
One of the simplest ways to optimise your refrigeration hygiene is by ensuring the entire cold space is operating at the correct temperature. You may think this is very simple, but you’d be surprised at how often businesses overlook this crucial factor.
Here are some key things to watch out for:
- Varying Temperature: Ensure you understand the varying temperatures in your fridge. Is the same temperature maintained throughout, or are certain sections colder than others? Ensure you know exactly where the coldest and warmest parts of your fridge are so you can place perishable items accordingly.
- The Right Temperature: The main cold section of your fridge should display a maximum of 5 degrees celsius on your thermometer reading. Too warm, and you risk your goods spoiling. Too cold, and you risk your items freezing.
- Proper Sealing: Ensure your fridge door is sealed properly. Leaving the fridge door open or having a broken seal can raise the internal temperature and risk spoiled goods.
- Temperature Monitoring: Depending on the size of your refrigerator, you’ll want to have multiple mercury-free thermometers placed in different sections to ensure the right cold temperature is maintained. If temperature should unexpectedly change, first check your temperature gauges. If you have further issues, you should immediately call a refrigeration expert to locate the problem or potential cold air leak.
- Proper Circulation: Overpacking your refrigerator too tightly may affect the longevity of your goods. You want to ensure each item has space so it can get proper circulation. If your fridge is packed too tightly, we strongly recommend you consider additional refrigeration space.
Prevent the Spreading of Harmful Bacteria
Prevention of harmful bacteria and microorganisms should be one of your primary concerns as a commercial business. Aside from creating potential waste, this can be seriously dangerous for you and your customers.
Here are a few ways to keep your refrigeration hygiene clean and bacteria free:
- Proper Storage: Ensure you have stored and seperated your items appropriately. For example, if you are storing food, raw items should be separated from ready to go items.
- Routine Cleaning & Maintenance: One of the best ways to ensure you are maximising your refrigeration hygiene efficiently, is to ensure your refrigerator is regularly cleaned and checked by professional refrigeration maintenance experts. Check out this article we wrote on the key benefits of refrigeration cleaning to find out more.
Optimising Shelf Life
As a business owner, it is imperative that you are aware of the average shelf life of your perishable products. Taking the food industry as an example again, various types of food items have varying shelf life, i.e. meat and seafood will last for a shorter length of time then dairy products.
Of course, there is no better way to optimise shelf life then by making sure the product you are purchasing in the first place is high quality. Quality perishables are guaranteed to last longer than cheaper, lower quality items.
BEARS Refrigeration and Air Conditioning, are industry professionals for all things refrigeration hygiene, commercial refrigeration, and more.
Want to know how you can best optimise your refrigeration hygiene? Give us a call today for personalised recommendations, tailored to your business.
