Freezer Merchandiser Buying Guide

You can tell customers about your products. You can tell them that they are better, higher-quality, lighter, faster, stronger, tastier, more durable, easier to use, fast-acting, long-lasting and anything else you want. But unless they’re properly and attractively merchandised, you will have a hard time convincing people of anything. A merchandising freezer is the way to go when you need to pleasingly display all manner of frozen food. Merchandising freezers are a fantastic way to highlight specialty frozen items, like trendy flavors of ice cream or other frozen treats, and are suitable for front-of-the-house use. Interior lighting is another universal fixture, used to help exhibit the product in a bright and attractive way. The fluorescent lighting used by some models incorporates safety-shielding, which makes sure that the glass isn’t accidentally broken, forcing you to have to turn off your merchandiser, remove all of the stock, and hunt for every tiny shard of glass you can find, which is a monumental waste of energy and time.

While there are similarities between the merchandising freezer and the refrigerated merchandiser, the former is an entirely different animal. For instance, these freezers need to maintain a temperature of –10°F and –20°F, which is slightly lower than the temperature reach-in freezers maintain. This is primarily because merchandising freezers are open much more often than reach-in freezers, and thus, need to keep the temperature lower, as the chilled air frequently escapes. The merchandising freezers found on this website all have an oversized (R404A) refrigeration system that is CFC free. All merchandising freezers also have powerful defrost systems. They are time initiated and temperature terminated, meaning that they can be set to start defrosting for a specific time and set to stop at a specific temperature, to ensure the freezer doesn't totally defrost, ruining all the products it contains.

There are five capacity options for merchandising freezers on this site: 10 cubic feet, 23 cubic feet, 35 cubic feet, 40.6 cubic feet and 49 cubic feet. The three largest units are two-door models, and all the merchandising freezers have hinged doors. The doors on a merchandising freezer also play a key role in preserving low temperatures; they are usually self-closing and have magnetic and gasketed seals, to make certain that the refrigerated air stays where it should: in the merchandiser. It should also be noted that a merchandising freezer is NSF-approved to hold pre-packaged food items, but not NSF-approved to hold opened food items. It is also worthy to note that all the merchandising freezers have tempered glass doors, through which customers can look through; otherwise, it couldn’t be called a merchandiser. The glass goes through the tempering process to strengthen it, making it 4-6 times stronger than regular glass. It also ensures that, in the unfortunate event of breakage, that it shatters into small, square pieces. All of these merchandisers have vinyl exteriors and vinyl coated wire shelves, because of how easy it is to clean, and how durable and low maintenance it is. It also resists both peeling and cracking and the exterior vinyl is available in either black or white. There are four wire shelves in a unit with a single door, and eight in a unit with two doors; each shelf can support up to 250 lbs. Like all merchandisers, these models come with illuminated and decorative signs.

There is also a subgroup of merchandising freezers: the ice merchandiser . These units are considerably different from most merchandising freezers, for a variety of reasons. They keep ice at a significantly higher temperature than merchandising freezers, around 20°F to 25°F, and use an oversized (134A) refrigeration system, similar to the ones found in refrigerated merchandises. While ice merchandisers have a tempered glass door as well, they also have a specially designed floor rack to maintain and improve airflow, and a 12" wide basin that protects the vital parts of the freezer from melting ice. These units come with an illuminated and decorative "Ice" merchandising sign, as well.