Check the food with a probe thermometer rather than the door display, because Food Standards Australia New Zealand requires an accessible thermometer accurate to within 1 degree C and says equipment gauges measure the appliance, not the food.
Skai Solutions answers the phone for Australian and New Zealand venues, which means we hear from kitchens on the morning everything has gone wrong, and a fridge that will not hold temperature is one of the two or three that stop a service. This page is the order to work through: what the failure costs, six causes from cheapest to dearest, what the Food Standards Code says you must throw out, and the three honest options if nothing works.
Three separate bills, and venues usually only budget for the first one.
The stock is the obvious one. A full under bench fridge or a loaded cool room is the single densest pile of money in the building, and unlike a power cut there is no distributor payment to claim when your own compressor dies. Our power outage page covers the payment you can claim when the grid is at fault. This is not that.
The second bill is the service call, and it is the one people delay to their cost. A technician who comes out while the fridge is still holding 8 degrees C is replacing a fan or a gasket. A technician who comes out two days later is replacing a compressor that ran flat out until it failed.
The third bill is the trading day. If the cool room is the only cold storage you have, the question stops being about the fridge and becomes whether you open. That decision is made better at 7am with a probe thermometer in your hand than at 11am with a function booked.
Work through these in order, because the order is roughly cheapest to dearest and roughly most to least likely in a working kitchen.
It is overstocked. Food Standards Australia New Zealand puts this first in its own refrigeration guidance: do not overstock refrigerators, so chilled air can circulate. A fridge packed to the ceiling after a delivery is the most common "broken" fridge in hospitality and the cheapest to fix. Pull a third of it out and watch the temperature for an hour.
The door is the problem, not the motor. A torn gasket, a door left on the latch during a delivery, or a hinge that has dropped so the seal no longer meets. FSANZ's guidance is to avoid opening refrigerator doors too often or leaving them open for long periods. Run a hand around the seal with the door shut and feel for cold air escaping.
The condenser is blocked. In a kitchen the coil behind or under the unit collects grease and dust until it cannot shed heat. The fridge then runs continuously and still drifts up. This is a brush and a vacuum, and FSANZ's own line is to regularly maintain and service your refrigerators.
The fan has stopped. If the unit is running but there is no air movement inside, the evaporator fan has failed. That is a technician job and a cheap part, and it is the failure that most often gets misread as a dying compressor.
It is iced up. A sheet of ice on the evaporator stops heat transfer completely. Defrost it fully, then find out why, because repeated icing is usually a door seal or a drain problem rather than a one off.
The compressor has gone. Last on the list because it is last in frequency, not first. If the unit is silent, or running hot and never cycling off, it is a quote rather than a repair.
This is the part no equipment supplier will answer for you, and it has an actual legal frame in Australia rather than an opinion.
Under Standard 3.2.2 of the Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code, potentially hazardous food must be kept at 5 degrees C or colder, or 60 degrees C or hotter, unless you can show another temperature is safe. That applies at receipt, in storage, on display and in transport.
The decision you then have to make is about time, not about the fridge. How long the food has been between 5 and 60 degrees C is the only question that matters, and it is cumulative across prep, storage, transport and display. The rule itself, including the part most kitchens get backwards, is set out on our 2 hour 4 hour rule page. Read it before you decide to keep anything, because the two hour and four hour thresholds run in the opposite direction to the mandatory cooling rule that uses the same two numbers.
Two limits from FSANZ's storage guidance are worth knowing before you sort the shelves, because they rule things out before the temperature question even arises. Unpackaged potentially hazardous ready to eat food should not be stored for more than 5 days. Food containing raw or low cooked eggs should generally not be kept longer than 24 hours. If the aioli was made Tuesday, the fridge failure on Friday is not the reason it goes.
This is the single most useful line in the Australian food safety guidance and almost nobody in hospitality has read it. FSANZ states it plainly on its thermometers page: "Temperature gauges on equipment like bain maries and refrigerators measure the equipment's temperature, but to be sure of the actual food's temperature you should use a probe thermometer." And: "Don't rely only on fixed temperature gauges on equipment."
So a cool room display reading 4 degrees C is evidence about the cool room, not about the chicken. In a failing unit the gap between the two is exactly where the risk lives, because the air near the sensor cools first and the dense food in the middle of the shelf cools last.
The same page sets the requirement that makes this possible, and it is the hardest number on this page. Under Standard 3.2.2 clause 22, a food business handling potentially hazardous food needs an accurate and accessible thermometer, which FSANZ reduces to two tests: there is at least one thermometer somewhere easy to get to, for example in an unlocked drawer in the kitchen, and the thermometer is accurate to within 1 degree C. A probe in a locked office is not compliance, and neither is a probe nobody has calibrated since it was bought.
Practically: measure the food, in the thickest part, in several places in the unit, because FSANZ's own advice is to measure different foods in your refrigerator to check whether there are spots where food is not at the right temperature. A fridge can be fine at the front and failing at the back.
If the heat side of the kitchen is the problem rather than the cold side, the fault list is different and so is the compliance tail. See why a commercial oven will not reach temperature.
Then you are making a trading decision, and there are only three honest options.
Move the stock. Another unit, a chest freezer turned down, an esky with ice and a probe in it, or a neighbour's cool room. This buys hours, not days, and it only works if you are measuring the food rather than the box.
Cut the menu. Trade on what does not need that unit. A kitchen that can run eight dishes cold-storage-free is a kitchen that opens. This is the same muscle as covering a shift when someone calls in sick, which our staff calling in sick page works through.
Close for the day. Unglamorous and sometimes correct. The cost of one lost service is knowable. The cost of a food complaint is not, and our food poisoning complaint page sets out what that process actually looks like once it starts.
Whichever you pick, the phone is going to ring with bookings for tonight while you are standing in the cool room with a probe. That is the gap Skai Solutions fills: the phone gets answered, the bookings that you can still honour get taken, and the ones you cannot get a straight answer rather than a dead line. Setup takes about five days, so it is not the fix for this morning, which is why this page leads with the fridge and not with us. If your phone is quiet enough that a voicemail covers it, a voicemail covers it, and our cheapest way to answer the phone page is honest about where that line sits.
For the other appliance that stops a service dead, see commercial dishwasher not working, which is ordered the same way, by what the machine is doing rather than by what is inside it.
The sibling case is worth knowing before summer, because it fails for the same reason in the same week: an ice machine that stops making ice is usually scale or a hot, blocked condenser rather than a dead compressor.
Four things, none of which require buying anything expensive.
Service the units on a schedule rather than on failure, which is FSANZ's own wording: regularly maintain and service your refrigerators. Clean condenser coils monthly in a kitchen, because grease is not dust and it does not fall off.
Keep a probe thermometer that meets the 1 degree C accuracy test, calibrate it, and replace the battery before it dies. FSANZ's practical note is to clean and sanitise probes before and after use with warm soapy water and an alcohol wipe.
Record food temperatures rather than air temperatures, twice a day, in the same places. Templates for this sit in Appendix 8 of Safe Food Australia, the FSANZ guide to the Chapter 3 standards. A written record is what turns "the fridge seemed fine" into something you can actually stand behind.
Stop loading a fridge to the ceiling after a delivery. If the delivery does not fit with air gaps, the delivery is too big for your cold storage, and that is a purchasing problem wearing a refrigeration costume.
One scope note, because it matters. The Chapter 3 standards quoted here are Australian. A New Zealand venue works to a food control plan under the Food Act 2014, so follow the temperature and record keeping rules in your own plan rather than these clause numbers.
Why is my commercial fridge not cooling?
In a working kitchen the order of likelihood is overstocking that blocks air circulation, a failed or torn door seal, a condenser coil blocked with grease, a stopped evaporator fan, a fully iced evaporator, and only then the compressor. The first three cost nothing or almost nothing to rule out, and Food Standards Australia New Zealand lists not overstocking and regular servicing in its own refrigeration guidance.
Can I still trade if the fridge is not cooling?
It depends on the food, not the fridge. Potentially hazardous food must be kept at 5 degrees C or colder, or 60 degrees C or hotter, unless you can show another temperature is safe. Decide by measuring the food with a probe thermometer and by how long it has been between 5 and 60 degrees C, which is cumulative across prep, storage, transport and display.
What temperature should a commercial fridge be in Australia?
Potentially hazardous food must be at 5 degrees C or colder in storage, display, transport and at receipt, unless you can show another temperature is safe. That is a requirement about the food, not about the appliance, which is why the number on the door is not the number that counts.
Does the thermometer on the fridge count as compliance?
No. Food Standards Australia New Zealand states that temperature gauges on equipment like bain maries and refrigerators measure the equipment's temperature, and that to be sure of the food's temperature you should use a probe thermometer. Standard 3.2.2 clause 22 requires at least one accurate and accessible thermometer, accurate to within 1 degree C, somewhere easy to get to such as an unlocked kitchen drawer.
How long can food stay in a fridge that has stopped working?
There is no fixed grace period for a broken fridge. The clock that matters is time between 5 and 60 degrees C, measured in the food and added up across the whole day. Two separate FSANZ limits also apply regardless: unpackaged potentially hazardous ready to eat food should not be stored more than 5 days, and food containing raw or low cooked eggs should generally not be kept longer than 24 hours.
Is a fridge breakdown the same as a power outage?
No, and the difference is money. In a power outage the fault is upstream and there may be a payment to claim from your distributor. When your own unit fails there is no such payment, the stock loss falls on you or your insurer, and the repair is yours. The food safety decision is identical in both cases.