If your business involves perishable items in any way, one of the challenges that you as a business owner face is the problem of keeping your inventory from spoiling before it reaches customers’ hands. Though a few methods are available to help in this task, refrigeration is certainly the most reliable and scalable. This leads to the question of what type of refrigeration devices you should have on-site to ensure the most efficient and effective cooling of your products. One option to consider is a walk-in cooler, given the following benefits of installing one in your store.

Size
Since it’s unlikely that your business is located in Antarctica, artificial refrigeration will be a need for as long as you remain in business. This means that the size of refrigeration units available to you can become a pinch point in your production process unless you effectively plan for the future. A walk-in cooler helps you to do just that. By cooling an entire room to the required temperature, you will have plenty of space to accomplish an effective production process, both now and in the future.

Efficiency
The goal of refrigeration installation companies is to save you as much money as possible so you can instead invest that money into other areas of your business. A walk-in cooler helps your business to be more efficient by providing a single access point to your refrigerated spaces, rather than having multiple access points that can each serve as a potential source of energy loss. With a walk-in cooler, if you begin to notice inefficiencies, you’ll know right where to start to address these problems to return your unit to efficient operation.

Convenience
As with any business, you want to help your employees be as productive as possible as they complete their assigned tasks. A walk-in cooler can aid in this endeavor by allowing your employees to continue their tasks, even while they are in the refrigerated space. With a smaller refrigerated unit, employees are typically forced to move back and forth between refrigerated and non-refrigerated spaces, resulting in inefficiencies in movement and energy consumption. However, inside a walk-in cooler, employees can complete all required tasks within the refrigerated space before moving on to other areas of the production area, protecting your perishable inventory and ensuring your employees remain productive.

Simplification
Every refrigeration unit, no matter how big or small, operates in essentially the same way. Therefore, within a certain margin to account for use cases, refrigeration units all require maintenance on a similar interval. By utilizing a walk-in cooler, then, you can simplify the maintenance that’s required to be performed on your refrigeration units by reducing the number of units located within your facility. Typically, this will require less labor by qualified repair personnel, helping you to save money on your facility maintenance budget.

Proper Safety
Though walk-in coolers offer many advantages for your company’s refrigeration needs, it’s important that you and your employees understand the risks associated with walk-in coolers to help mitigate these risks as much as possible. The biggest element is to ensure that built-in safety devices to prevent entrapment are in good working order at all times, as well as understanding that repairs should only be performed by qualified personnel. By following these common-sense safety protocols, you will ensure that you gain the maximum advantage from the installation of a walk-in cooler in your store.

A walk-in cooler has many benefits, and can speed up and simplify the daily routine of your retail or restaurant workers. So consider these potential benefits as you’re making plans for how best to improve efficiency in your workplace.

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information, contact Brooke via Facebook at facebook.com/brooke.chaplan or Twitter @BrookeChaplan