Different businesses use cold storage in different ways. The examples below are starting points, not fixed packages.
In short: product temperature, delivery pattern and workflow matter more than the industry label.
| Sector | Common priority |
|---|---|
| restaurant or hotel | quick access, mixed packs, frequent door use |
| retail | reliable stock rotation and delivery handling |
| food production | hygiene, washdown needs and product pull-down |
| pharmacy or laboratory | tight monitoring, alarms and documented mapping |
| flowers or produce | humidity, airflow and product-specific temperature |
A small restaurant may suit one positive-temperature room with a compact unit. A shop holding frozen and chilled goods needs separate temperature zones. Production that cools warm food requires a process calculation and may need blast chilling rather than a storage room.
Monoblock or split selection depends on heat rejection, noise, line route, capacity and service access. It should not be decided from sector alone.
Typical configurations
| Sector | Typical size | Temperature | Characteristic features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant / small food service | 6–15 m³ | +2 °C to +4 °C chill, or −18 °C to −22 °C freeze | Compact footprint, hinged door, monoblock refrigeration, shelving-optimised layout |
| Supermarket / retail | 20–100 m³ (often multiple rooms) | Zoned — dairy +4 °C, meat 0 °C, frozen −22 °C | High-traffic doors with strip curtains, reinforced floors, monitoring |
| Food processing / distribution | 100–500+ m³ | Varies; often blast-chill capability | Sliding doors for forklifts, heavy-duty floors, ante-rooms, HACCP logging |
| Pharmaceutical / medical | 5–50 m³ | +2 °C to +8 °C (most vaccines); specialist down to −80 °C | Tight tolerance (≈ ±0.5 °C), redundant refrigeration, continuous logging, alarms, backup power |
Sliding doors, rooms above ~50 m³, and −80 °C storage are industry-typical patterns shown for context; the Frostbox standard range uses hinged, semi-recessed doors (700/900 × 1800 mm) — for larger or specialist configurations contact [email protected].
Monoblock or split?
Smaller rooms commonly pair with a monoblock unit (wall or ceiling mounted), while larger or multi-zone sites favour split systems and central plant.
Frostbox draws from the real Daikin unit families — for example GS and SP-O for quick-connect duties and DB-O, RDV, and SAR / SAS for standard split installs. The right family depends on capacity, temperature class, and pipe-run distance. See Refrigeration system selection for how to match a unit to the load.
A worked mini-example
A delicatessen needs to chill packaged charcuterie at +2 °C. Peak stock is 1,200 kg of boxed goods.
- Volume of product: 1,200 kg ÷ 350 kg/m³ ≈ 3.4 m³.
- Add 25 % growth buffer → 4.3 m³ of product.
- Add ~30 % working space → roughly 6 m³ internal room.
- Temperature +2 °C → 80 mm panels (Frostbox cold-room standard).
- Low traffic, level sealed slab → hinged door, and the room is a candidate for the 80 mm without-floor option.
That lands squarely in the restaurant / small-food-service band — a compact ~6 m³ chiller on a monoblock unit. Running the same inputs through the size calculator confirms the dimensions and returns the refrigeration capacity.
Related articles
- Choosing the Right Cold Room: The Five Questions
- Temperature and panel thickness
- Sizing for volume and traffic
- Site constraints and total budget
- Using the Frostbox size calculator
- Refrigeration system selection
Configurations reflect MTH Algor panels and Daikin refrigeration supplied by Frostbox; the right match depends on your product, site, and load. For a tailored specification — custom dimensions available on request — contact [email protected].
