A cool room rarely fails at a convenient time. It's usually late on a Friday, the night before a big event, or in the middle of a WA heatwave when the compressor has been working hardest. When it happens, what you do in the first hour decides how much stock you keep and how much you throw away.
This checklist is written for restaurants, caterers, food wholesalers, aged care kitchens and anyone else in Perth who stores chilled or frozen goods.
1. Keep the door shut and check the temperature
Every time the door opens, warm air rushes in. Keep it closed while you work out what's happening, and nominate one person to go in and out.
Then check the actual air and product temperature with a calibrated probe thermometer, not just the display on the unit. Write down the reading and the time. You'll need that record for your food safety program and possibly for an insurance claim.
2. Know your limits: 5°C and frozen
Under Australia's Food Standards Code, potentially hazardous food needs to be kept at 5°C or below, and frozen food needs to stay frozen. The range between 5°C and 60°C is often called the temperature danger zone, because that's where bacteria grow fastest.
If your cool room is still at or under 5°C, you have time to act. If product has already gone above it, talk to your food safety supervisor about what can be kept and what must be discarded. When in doubt, throw it out.
3. Rule out the simple causes
Before calling a refrigeration technician, spend two minutes on the basics:
- Has a circuit breaker tripped or a power point been switched off?
- Is the door seal damaged, or has something stopped the door closing fully?
- Is the evaporator iced over, or are the fans blocked by stacked stock?
- Is the condenser outside blocked or covered?
If none of these fixes it, book a technician straight away and ask for a realistic arrival time. That answer tells you whether you can wait it out or need to move your stock.
4. Decide whether to move the stock
If the technician can't get there before your products approach 5°C, the safest option is usually to get the stock out of the failed unit and into working refrigeration. You have three main options:
- Another cool room on site, if you have the space.
- A neighbouring business or supplier with spare capacity.
- A refrigerated truck or ute that collects the stock and keeps it at temperature until your unit is repaired.
A refrigerated vehicle is often the fastest option, because it comes to you and can hold product at chilled or frozen temperature for as long as you need. Our emergency refrigerated transport service runs 24/7, including nights, weekends and public holidays.
5. Load quickly and in the right order
When the vehicle arrives:
- Move frozen product first, then the most temperature-sensitive chilled items (dairy, seafood, meat, medicines), then everything else.
- Keep pallets and cartons tightly packed so cold air holds, but don't block the airflow from the refrigeration unit.
- Record what goes in and the temperature at loading. This keeps your cold chain records complete.
The driver will confirm the vehicle is already at the right temperature before loading starts.
6. Keep records for your food safety program
Write down when the failure was noticed, the temperatures you measured, what was moved, what was discarded and why. If you run a HACCP-based food safety program, this is exactly the kind of event it expects you to document. You can read more in our guide to what HACCP certification means for transport.
Plan for next time
Most businesses only think about a backup plan after the first failure. A few simple steps now will save a lot of stress later:
- Save a refrigeration technician's after-hours number and our dispatch number, +61 424 245 756, in your phone.
- Add a temperature alarm to your cool room if it doesn't have one.
- Agree in advance who on your team makes the call to move stock.
If you'd like a refrigerated vehicle on standby for a busy period, or a regular scheduled delivery that takes pressure off your cool room, send us the details and we'll come back with options.
