That moment when you realize. ..

You are going to toss out a few hundred dollars of toppings and such. We came in to a 75F prep table today. Plenty of freon, evap fan running but no compressor. Started poking around the electrical and found this. 20160824_113248.jpg
Had that happen once before on a True table. Repairman is here now to rewire.

Link is broken :(, also last week my closing manager turned the makeline off to stop a vibration (the cover plate over the coils is coming loose) and he forgot to turn it back on. Came in the next morning and yeah… not happy

oof!
That blows!
We use a countertop makeline cooler, although I trust it will not fail or not hold prop[er temps for us, we still empty it and load everything onto a speed rack and into the walk-in with all product at nights close.

We empty the bottom out, but leave the bins in over night. Except on Saturdays (we are closed on Sundays atm, or any holiday we will be closed for).

In over 17 years we had one makeline fail and another time came unplugged when moved for the nightly cleaning which probably cos us $150 each time since it happened after the shift when the stock level is lowest… Simply not worth the time and effort to pull stuff out and put it back every night. Even if it only took 15 minutes each day combined to fool with it that would come to something more than 1500 hours of effort over those years. Any way you slice it that is worth thousands of dollars. We have also had the walkin fail twice during those 17 years! Our various freezers have also failed on occasion including once where we lost 200 pints of Ben & Jerry’s. (Luckily we caught it before a couple of hundred pounds of frozen meats thawed)

In the bottom area we have mostly got salad makings, infrequently used toppings, chicken wings and wing sauces so, for us, the cheese in the bin above is probably the most valuable inventory in the entire unit at about $40 when the bin is full. Each 1/3 pan might have $10 of meat in them and less than that in veggies. My guess is that we would typically have between $100 and $200 value at risk total.

So no, we do not mess around with pulling stuff out on the chance that the line might fail overnight. Make sure your business insurance covers this, maintain your equipment, replace as needed and move on.