Your Guide to Refrigeration for Outdoor Festivals and Events
There’s nothing better than a cold beverage or treat at a hot festival, but with limited access to power, space, and storage, keeping things cold at an outdoor event is easier said than done. This is where mobile cold rooms come in handy. They are great at keeping your food and drinks fresh and cool, even in an outdoor space.
The Complete Guide to Refrigeration for Outdoor Events.
Why Proper Refrigeration Is Important
When serving customers food, your top priority is making sure that it’s fresh and safe to consume. While food items may be well within their best before date, many of them will spoil quickly when exposed to heat. Serving up food that has spoiled puts the customer at risk of developing food poisoning, which in turn puts your business at risk.
While storing food in eskys or cooler bags may seem like a good option it’s never as consistent as proper refrigeration, especially in an environment exposed to the sun, and so isn’t worth the risk.
Eskys won’t help you keep your food consistently at the right temperature
Mobile Cold Rooms
For refrigeration you can count on in an exposed area, mobile cold rooms are your safest bet. They’re easy to move around, have ample storage, and are temperature controlled so that you can be sure your food is staying cold at all times. They are also easy to power, plugging into the standard outlet which is usually available in large outdoor event spaces.
When positioning your mobile cold room, it’s best to place it near to where you will be cooking or serving. With limited distance from the cold room to the customer you can be sure they are getting the freshest product possible. Check the temperature of the mobile cold room frequently to ensure there are no unexplained rises or falls in temperature and try to keep the door closed as much as possible to keep the temperature constant.
Where to Store Different Foods
When storing an assortment of different foods, it’s important that you organise and prioritise your cold room. For foods that are the most likely to spoil in heat such as raw meat and seafood, store them in the coldest part of the mobile cold room.
It is also a good idea to keep them on the lowest shelf, firstly because lower shelves stay colder than higher shelves but also to avoid raw food contaminating cooked food from the juices of raw meats dripping down onto ready to serve dishes. Fresh produce can be stored up the top of the cold room as they can withstand changes in temperature.
Try to store or cover all your food in containers or with plastic wrap to retain freshness. Cooked food is best stored in the middle shelves. If it’s freshly cooked, place it in the mobile cold room without a cover until it cools down, then cover.
A mobile cold room hire is the easiest and most effective way to store perishable items at an outdoor event. If you have any questions or an enquiry about our mobile cold rooms, please contact us.
You can check out the upcoming local events that we support at the link below, and if you’d like to include your event on our website, just contact us at info@kleercoldroomhire.com.au