Most refrigeration problems in hospitality don’t begin in the cabinet. They begin in the conversation before the cabinet — a vague idea that “we need more fridge space” handed to whoever answers the phone. A written brief, even a single page, changes the shape of that conversation. It gives a supplier something concrete to match against what they actually hold, and it gives you a clear reason for the model you eventually sign off on.

Here’s how to build one properly — and why it pays to build it with a supplier who stocks the category locally rather than ordering blind from a catalogue thumbnail.

Start With the Job, Not the Cabinet

The first line of any fridge brief should describe work, not product. Walk your kitchen at the busiest point of service and write down what the fridge is actually being asked to do. Two broad families cover most of it: upright storage cabinets for back-of-house stock, and bar fridges for front-of-house or service-point access. Which side of that line you sit on decides everything downstream — footprint, door layout, shelving, and how close it needs to be to the pass.

Answer these before you talk to anyone:

What’s stored? Raw protein, dairy, prepped mise en place, dough, pastry trays, bottled drinks, cans, kegs, garnishes. A cabinet that holds 25 or 50 bakery trays is a different animal to one that holds milk crates and sauce tubs, and the difference should be written down, not assumed.

Packaged or open? Sealed cartons and bottled stock behave very differently to uncovered containers and loose produce. Say which one dominates your day.

How often does the door open? A pastry cabinet opened twice a shift and a back bar fridge opened forty times during Friday service are two completely different briefs, even if the litres look similar.

Who reaches in, and from where? Bar staff reaching over a counter, a chef working a line, a baker loading trays at 4am. Note the body position and the working height, because it rules models in and out fast.

Write it in plain language. Something like: “Back bar for a 70-seat pub, bottles and cans, glass doors so punters can see the range, staff reaching over a 900mm counter, next to the fryer line.” That single sentence already narrows the field considerably. A brief for a bakery might instead read: “Upright storage for pastry trays, solid door, loaded from the front, positioned away from the oven bank.” Both are useful. Neither mentions a model number.

Give the Supplier the Site Facts That Rule Models Out

Most shortlists get trimmed by site constraints, not by preference. The second half of your brief is the boring logistics that quietly decide what will actually fit through the door and sit level once it’s there.

Measure the path, not just the alcove. Cabinet dimensions are only half the equation. Walk the delivery route with a tape: doorway widths, corridor turns, lift dimensions, any step or threshold, and the height of the space above the final position. A cabinet that fits the alcove but not the corridor is a very expensive lesson.

Note what’s available at the wall. Don’t assume power is where you need it, or that what’s there suits the cabinet you have in mind. Write down what’s actually installed and where the nearest outlet sits, then have that verified rather than guessed. If a cabinet needs ventilation clearance, note what’s above, beside and behind the intended position.

Describe the heat around it. A fridge positioned beside a fryer bank, under a hot pass or in a west-facing back room is doing harder work than one in a cool dry store. Say so up front — it’s the kind of detail that changes which model is appropriate, and it’s exactly what a supplier will ask.

Say if you need underbench. If refrigeration beneath a work surface is what you’re after, state it plainly, because that’s a separate range entirely and mixing the two wastes everybody’s time.

Flag the delivery-day volume. If your problem is that uprights can no longer hold what arrives on delivery day, say that specifically. There’s a difference between needing a bigger cabinet and needing a different storage strategy altogether.

This is where a local supplier earns their keep. Being able to stand in a showroom, open the doors, check the internal height and compare two cabinets side by side beats reading a spec sheet every time. Atlantic Equipment runs a Granville showroom open Monday to Friday 9am–5pm and Saturday 10am–2pm, which makes that step a fifteen-minute errand rather than a leap of faith.

What a Locally Stocked Category Adds to the Brief

When a supplier holds the whole category rather than ordering it in, your brief stops being a purchase order and becomes a comparison exercise. You’re no longer asking “can you get this?” — you’re asking “of what you hold, which one best matches what I’ve written down?”

That matters because refrigeration decisions are almost always a trade-off between competing priorities. Hinged doors versus sliding. Solid versus glass. Single door versus double. A standard upright versus a roll-in cabinet. A two-door glass back bar unit versus a three-door version of the same family. Seeing those options together makes the trade-offs visible, and the current commercial fridges catalogue on Atlantic Equipment currently lists 229 products across brands including Williams, Polar, Skope, Thermaster, Coldline, Anvil, True Refrigeration, Atosa, FED-X and Hoshizaki — a count that reflects the live catalogue today and can change.

Breadth is only useful if it’s sorted properly, so build the sorting into your brief. Note what’s fixed (must fit the alcove, must hold trays, must face the service aisle) and what’s flexible (door finish, brand, exact litre capacity). Suppliers can work with that. They can’t work with “something bigger than what we’ve got”.

Keep the wider refrigeration picture in mind too. If uprights genuinely can’t carry delivery-day stock, a purpose-built cool room or freezer room is the more sensible conversation, and that can be designed to suit the site rather than squeezed into a gap. Where cash flow is the constraint, Atlantic Equipment is an authorised dealer for SilverChef Rent-Try-Buy, which the finance page describes as renting equipment with low weekly payments and the option to upgrade or purchase after 12 months — treat that as general orientation and confirm actual terms in a written quotation.

Warranty, delivery and installation arrangements should be written into the brief as questions rather than assumptions, and confirmed in writing before you commit. Then date your brief, keep it to one page, and update it whenever the menu or the floor plan shifts. A brief that lives and breathes with the business gets you a far better answer than one that gets rewritten from scratch every time something fails.