Many restaurants, supermarkets, retail food outlets and other businesses use cool rooms to store their products. These spaces provide a controlled temperature environment that helps to maximise the shelf life of perishable items, improve food safety and use space more efficiently.
A good cooling room is important for businesses to meet health and safety requirements, but it’s crucial that it’s also hygienic and well-maintained. The R-value of insulation is also important to consider when building a new cool room.
Increased Shelf Life
Cool rooms provide a safe and regulated environment for perishable foods, preserving the quality, safety, and nutritional value. This allows businesses to minimize waste and increase operational efficiency, delivering superior food quality to consumers.
Professionally designed and installed coolrooms are essential for safeguarding delicate goods, minimizing food loss, and meeting strict health and hygiene regulations. The process involves meticulous planning and adherence to regulations. The proper insulation, temperature control systems, ventilation mechanisms, and other features are essential for ensuring optimal conditions that prolong shelf life and preserve product quality.
Major supermarket chains and restaurants would be lost without their commercial cool rooms. These specialized rooms, constructed by expert cool room builders, maintain low temperatures that inhibit bacterial growth, slow down enzymatic reactions, and extend the shelf life of perishable food items. In addition, these spaces allow for better use of space and save on energy costs compared to individual refrigeration units. Cool rooms can be located indoors or outdoors, and some models even come with built-in security features for added protection. Moreover, smart cool rooms, meticulously crafted by skilled builders, can continuously optimize energy use based on real-time energy prices and grid demand
Less Food Waste
A cool room can significantly extend the shelf life of food items, which reduces the risk of food spoilage and waste. This can save restaurants and other food service providers a significant amount of money and make their operations more sustainable.
In addition to reducing wasted food, cool rooms can help to improve food safety. By storing foods at a consistent low temperature, cool rooms can slow down the growth of bacteria that can cause foodborne illness. This can help to prevent the spread of harmful bacteria, which is a major concern for many people in the US.
Cool rooms can be a smart addition to new homes or retrofits, particularly those located in warmer climates that would have trouble with air-conditioning during an extreme heat event. However, full-home-scale measures such as photovoltaic (solar) panels and whole-home backup power are likely to be more effective and cost-efficient in most cases. If this is not a viable option, an isolated cool room could be a lifesaver. This is especially true for homes without backup power, as well as those whose south- or west-facing walls are difficult to shade effectively.
Improved Food Safety
Certain fruits and vegetables spoil rapidly at room temperature, resulting in food waste that costs money and loses the nutritional value of fresh ingredients. Increasing the shelf life of these foods through cold rooms can help save businesses both time and money.
Cool storage rooms are the ideal solution for commercial kitchens, as they provide a safe environment for perishable food items. These refrigerated rooms can be walk-in or reach-in and are used to store a wide variety of food items at a safe temperature, reducing the risk of bacteria growth.
Cool rooms can also be useful for homes that don’t have a full-home backup power system. During extreme heat events, these rooms can offer protection for occupants without relying on large electric loads that would typically require whole-home battery backup systems. This type of retrofit requires a smart cooling room that is able to adapt its energy usage depending on real-time electricity price fluctuations, external temperatures, and grid demand. The room should be well-insulated and have windows that are shaded by awnings or overhangs to reduce solar heat gain.
Reduced Energy Costs
Cool rooms are often a lot cheaper to run than individual fridges and freezers. They use much sturdier insulation and can be sized to accommodate all your inventory in one room. This means you’ll save money on cooling and energy costs and can also reduce waste by keeping everything organised in one place rather than storing it all around your store.
Food storage in a cool room can reduce the risk of bacteria and other pathogens growing, so more perishable food stays on the shelves and with customers. This helps restaurants and food service providers keep their profit margins high while reducing food waste, which is a big issue worldwide.
Smart cool rooms use intelligent controls to track temperature changes, optimize energy usage, and help businesses comply with regulations. This can also reduce product loss, improve worker health and safety, and make them more efficient to run. In addition, remote monitoring and alerts are useful to help owners avoid system failures, which can cause costly food losses. This is especially important for high-risk environments, such as restaurants and cafes.
Increased Flexibility
A cool room allows for more efficient storage of food, produce and drinks by allowing them to be stored at the optimum temperature. This ensures that your ingredients will be fresh and delicious for use when they are required in your restaurant.
Cool rooms can be a useful addition to any home and are especially beneficial for new homes or those not built to current energy codes that have photovoltaics and whole-home backup power. This is because the small electrical loads needed to cool one room are less than those required for a larger space such as the entire home.
For optimal performance, cool rooms should be located on the north or northeast side of a dwelling, avoiding unshaded south or west-facing walls which absorb solar heat. They should also be well-insulated, and preferably up to the insulation levels specified in the Design for Extreme Heat disaster resistance tool (see Figure 1). Light-coloured exteriors are better to reduce absorption of solar heat, and windows should be minimised or utilised only when necessary. Incandescent lighting should be replaced with LED fixtures, and unused appliances and computers should be turned off to prevent internal release of additional heat.