My commercial fridge is slowly losing temperature — what should I check before it spoils stock?

Question

The under-counter fridge in my café is slowly losing temperature — it's meant to sit at 1-5°C but it's been creeping up to 8-9°C, and the compressor seems to run almost constantly without pulling it back down. It's fine-ish overnight when the kitchen's cool, worse during service when it's hot and the door's opening a lot. I need to sort this fast — food safety says cold food should be at or below 5°C, and above that for too long I'm looking at spoiled stock and a failed temperature check. Before I call someone out (and pay for it), what can I check myself, and what genuinely needs a refrigeration technician? Trying to catch it before I lose a fridge full of stock in the summer heat.

Kareem F. · Accepted Answer

Short answer: a commercial fridge that runs non-stop but drifts to 8-9°C is almost always losing its cooling to a dirty condenser coil, a failed door gasket, or blocked airflow — check those three first; if they're clean and it still won't hold 5°C, it's a refrigeration fault (gas/compressor) for a technician. Act fast: food above 5°C is in the danger zone.

Check yourself (free, 15 minutes): 1. Condenser coil/grille — on a commercial under-counter it's usually a finned coil behind a front or rear grille. If it's furred with dust/grease (very common in a kitchen), it can't reject heat and the fridge runs forever and still drifts warm. Brush/vacuum it clean — this fixes a huge share of "warm fridge" cases. 2. Door gasket — do the paper test: shut a note in the door; if it slides out freely the seal's gone and cold is pouring out. Cheap to replace. 3. Airflow — overpacked shelves or stock blocking the internal vents stops cold air circulating; leave gaps.

Then check: is it near an oven/in direct sun, and is the door being held open during prep?

Needs a technician if: coil clean, gasket good, airflow clear — and it still won't reach 5°C. That points to low refrigerant (a leak), a failing compressor, or a thermostat/control fault — not DIY.

Food-safety note: cold food should be ≤5°C; the danger zone is roughly 5-60°C. While you diagnose, move stock to a fridge that's holding temp and keep a thermometer in the unit. Same first-principles as a domestic fridge not cooling, just higher stakes. A commercial refrigeration technician can pressure-test and regas if it's the sealed system. How fast is yours drifting — minutes or hours?

Jason S. · Answer

Home cook not F&B, but the condenser-coil thing bit me on a big American-style fridge too — it was caked in dust behind the grille, running constantly, drifting warm. Ten minutes with a vacuum and a coil brush and it was back to normal and much quieter. In a kitchen with grease in the air it'll clog faster, so worth putting the coil clean on a regular schedule, not just when it acts up. Cheapest possible fix if that's the cause.

DubaiFix Team · Answer

For the café specifically: keep a daily fridge temperature log — it's both a food-safety expectation and your early-warning system. A unit that's been quietly creeping up for days shows in the log before it spoils a load, so you catch it at "clean the coil" rather than "emergency call-out + binned stock." Pair that with a coil clean on a calendar and a spare gasket on the shelf, and warm-fridge emergencies mostly go away.

My commercial fridge is slowly losing temperature — what should I check before it spoils stock?

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