Uprights & Reach-ins

The upright cabinet is the quiet constant of a professional kitchen: everything at eye level, one door swing from the pass. It is also the piece most often bought on price and regretted on the third summer. Five things decide whether it earns its floor space.

Capacity, doors, and the reach a brigade actually makes

Cabinets here run from around 350 litres single-door up to 1,400 litres double-door. Bigger is not automatically better — two doors on a large cabinet means half the cold escapes on each opening, which is exactly what you want on a busy line. A single tall door on a stock cabinet that opens twice a shift is fine. Specify by how often the door moves, not only by what you need to store.

Chill, freeze, or both

Storage coolers hold roughly 0 to +10 °C; storage freezers run around −22 to −18 °C. Combined cabinets split the box so one unit does both — useful where floor space is genuinely tight, at some cost in flexibility. There are also specialist bands: sub-zero coolers for caviar and fish, and dry-aging cabinets for meat programmes, holding well over a hundred kilos. Match the band to what actually goes in.

GN compatibility keeps prep moving

A cabinet that takes Gastronorm trays straight from the prep bench saves a transfer at every step — GN 2/1 shelving is the practical standard for kitchens running trayed mise en place. If your cabinet does not take your trays, you will be decanting food twice a day for the life of the machine. Check it against your gastronorm containers.

Glass door or solid

Glass doors let the brigade find things without opening — genuinely faster on a line, and the right call for front-of-house or anywhere stock is checked constantly. Solid doors insulate better and cost less to run, which matters on freezers and long-term storage. Freezer cabinets with glass need proper triple glazing or they mist and ice up.

Refrigerant and running cost

Newer cabinets increasingly run on R290 (propane), which has a very low global warming potential and, in practice, good energy performance for cabinet-sized systems. Where you have a choice between an older refrigerant and R290 at similar spec, the newer one is the safer long-term buy — regulation on high-GWP refrigerants keeps tightening across the EU.

Building the whole cold chain rather than replacing one cabinet? Start at commercial refrigeration, and look at refrigerated workbenches for the cold you want under the prep line rather than across the room.