Commercial Refrigerators

Beer frosters and the ordinary glass-door cooler:

they look alike, but only one does what a Panamanian cantina asks of it all night. A froster pulls bottles below freezing so a cold beer comes out white with frost, and its controller usually lets it run warmer as a plain cooler too. The standard glass-door cooler by the entrance of any corner shop holds sodas, dairy and beer at fridge temperature and cannot be turned down into a froster. Frosters come as glass-door uprights and as low lidded chests that fit under a beach kiosk counter in Coronado.

Stainless reach-ins, prep tables and curved display cases:

in a kitchen the cold has to survive a door opened all through lunch, and that is the job of a solid-door stainless reach-in. A prep table puts refrigerated cupboards under the worktop with a rail of pans on top for pizza toppings or salad, and a back-bar cooler is low and wide, built to sit beneath a bar counter. Glass display cases, curved or straight, are for meat, cheese and cakes. Ice cream and frozen stock want a commercial freezer instead, and ranges and fryers sit with the rest of the commercial kitchen appliances.

Fogel, Imbera, True and who will fix them:

Fogel, which builds in Guatemala, and Imbera, from Mexico, make many of the glass-door coolers and frosters seen in Panamanian shops, while True, Turbo Air and Atosa are the stainless names in restaurant kitchens. On a used unit the brand matters for service, not prestige: ask whether a technician near you works on it and can get a gasket or fan motor without ordering from abroad. Newer coolers run on a propane-based refrigerant that not every technician is set up to recharge, so read the gas on the data plate before buying one far from the city.

What a one-door cooler or froster is worth:

a one-door glass cooler from a regional maker is around $1,000 to $1,300 new, and a froster of the same size closer to $2,000, since it needs more cooling power and thermal glass that stays clear below zero. Used one-door coolers go for around $250 to $400. At that price you are buying the compressor and little else, and its hours do not show on the outside, so a recent compressor or a technician’s receipt is what moves a used one to the top of that band.

A used froster, the thermometer and the door glass:

ask for it to be switched on hours before you arrive, then check it with your own thermometer in a bottle of water rather than trusting the display. A froster that cannot take that water below zero is short of gas or has a tired compressor, whatever its controller says. A compressor that never rests, or starts and stops every few minutes, is a repair on its way. Run a hand along the door gasket feeling for cold air escaping, and check that the door swings shut on its own. Fog trapped between the panes means the glass seal has failed, and rust along the base comes from years of mopping around it.

A cooler leaving your shop, and the pickup it leaves in:

give height, width and depth and the way the doors swing, because an upright has to clear someone else’s doorway and nobody drives over without those measurements. Photograph the data plate, the lit interior and a thermometer reading after a few hours running. Say whether it is a froster or a plain cooler, how old it is, and whether the compressor was ever replaced or the gas recharged. Clean the condenser coil before the photos, since a matted coil tells a buyer who knows refrigeration how the unit was treated. Whoever comes to collect it needs a pickup it can ride in upright and strapped, with a blanket over the glass, and should leave it standing some hours before plugging it in so the compressor oil settles.