Restaurant Refrigeration and Air Conditioning for Commercial Kitchens

Restaurant refrigeration and air conditioning in London

Climate Flow Limited installs, repairs and maintains restaurant refrigeration and air conditioning for commercial kitchens in London and surrounding areas. That covers walk-in cold rooms, reach-in fridges and freezers, blast chillers and cassette air conditioning, with 24/7 emergency callouts when something fails during service. Our engineers are F-Gas certified.

A restaurant kitchen is hard on equipment. It runs long hours, the room is hot, doors open all through service, and a fridge that stops holding temperature puts stock and a service at risk. This page covers what goes wrong, what the rules say about food temperatures and kitchen heat, and how the work is planned around trading.

Why does commercial kitchen refrigeration struggle in a hot kitchen?

Every fridge moves heat out of the cabinet and releases it somewhere else. A condensing unit is the part of a refrigeration system, holding the compressor and the condenser, that rejects that heat into the surrounding air. In a commercial kitchen that air is already warm from ovens, ranges and fryers, so the condensing unit has to work harder to shed the heat. One boxed in beside the cooking line, or in a space with little ventilation, is more likely to struggle to hold temperature on a busy day.

Staff feel the same heat. By law, the temperature in indoor workplaces, kitchens included, must be reasonable during working hours (Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations); the regulation sets no maximum figure. The HSE lists catering kitchens and bakeries among the workplaces where heat stress commonly occurs. Heat stress happens when the body's way of controlling its internal temperature starts to fail. Among its controls the HSE names fans or air conditioning, alongside steps such as rest breaks in cooler conditions and barriers against radiant heat. Restaurant air conditioning can help keep a kitchen and dining room workable; it is one part of the answer, not the whole of it.

What temperature does restaurant refrigeration need to hold?

Chilled food must be kept at 8°C or below. Food Standards Agency guidance on GOV.UK, chilling and freezing food, says this is a legal requirement in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and a recommendation in Scotland. The same guidance tells businesses to set fridges to 5°C or below, so food stays cold enough even when the temperature changes.

That gap matters in a kitchen. A reach-in fridge opened over and over during service, next to a hot range, is where temperature drifts. If a fridge fails outright, the guidance says chilled food can be kept out of the fridge for up to 4 hours, and after that it must be thrown away.

Cooling cooked food is the other pressure. GOV.UK guidance on cooking food safely says hot food kept below 63°C for up to 2 hours must then be cooled as quickly as possible to 8°C or below, or thrown away. A blast chiller is a fridge built to bring hot food down to chilled temperatures quickly, which is why kitchens that cook in batches use one.

Walk-in or reach-in: where does the stock go?

A walk-in cold room is an insulated room with its own refrigeration that staff walk into, used for bulk deliveries and prepared food. A reach-in fridge is an upright or under-counter cabinet on the line, holding what the chefs need during service. Many kitchens run both, and the balance depends on deliveries, menu and floor space. Our cold room installation page covers walk-in cold rooms and freezer rooms; we have also built a walk-in cold room and freezer for a food preparation area at King's Cross St Pancras Station.

Equipment we install and service for restaurants

• Walk-in cold rooms and freezer rooms: bulk storage for deliveries and prep.
• Reach-in and under-counter fridges and freezers: repair and maintenance of the cabinets on the cooking line.
• Blast chillers: installation and repair, covered on our blast chiller installation and repair page.
• Cassette air conditioning: a cassette unit is an indoor air conditioning unit set into the ceiling, used where a dining room or kitchen has a suspended ceiling.
• Ice machines and display chillers: for the bar and front of house.

All of this sits within our commercial refrigeration services, alongside condensing unit replacement and gas leak detection.

How is work planned around service?

Planned work, such as a maintenance visit, an installation or a condensing unit replacement, is booked at a time agreed with the site, so it can be arranged around service hours rather than in the middle of them. For an installation the engineer surveys the kitchen first: where the equipment goes, where the condensing unit can sit with clear airflow, and how the pipework and power reach it. Breakdowns are handled through our 24/7 emergency callouts.

Maintenance and F-gas leak checks

Planned preventive maintenance (PPM) means regular, scheduled visits to check and service equipment before it fails. For restaurant refrigeration it has a legal side too. F-gas refrigerants are fluorinated gases used in refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, and GOV.UK guidance on checking F gas equipment for leaks says equipment holding F gas above the lowest threshold must be checked for leaks at least once every 12 months, and more often for larger charges. How often is set by the system's refrigerant charge, and the users of the equipment are responsible for making sure the checks happen. A maintenance contract can include those checks and the records that go with them.

A restaurant project and places we've worked

For a restaurant on Orsman Road in London we installed two Mitsubishi Heavy Industries cassette air conditioning systems; the job is written up as Cassette AC installation for a restaurant, Orsman Road. Places we've worked include Kokoro, Alloro and Mama Li.

Restaurant refrigeration from Climate Flow

Climate Flow installs, repairs and maintains restaurant refrigeration and air conditioning for commercial kitchens across London and surrounding areas, from a single reach-in fridge to a walk-in cold room, with 24/7 emergency callouts. Climate Flow Limited, 2 Engineers Way, Wembley, London HA9 0JS.

This guide is general information, not a survey or a quote for your site; every system is different, so an engineer needs to see yours before any work is priced.