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Outdoor Refrigeration Saves Valuable Space Indoors

What’s one of the most ef- years old. Other than having
fective ways of creating more to put new refrigeration in it,
space back-of-house? Take out it’s ready to go again.”
the walk-in cooler or freezer by Another reason they
installing one on the outside of work so well for Ritenour
the store instead. That’s been the is they come pre-wired,
experience of Dave Ritenour, di- pre-assembled and ready to
rector of maintenance for Pizza operate. That ease of installa-
Hut of Fort Wayne (Indiana), a tion minimizes downtime for
51-store Pizza Hut franchisee. his operations. “It’s an easy
“In many of our stores, setup,” says Ritenour. “They
we’ve outgrown the existing show up at 7:30 a.m. and by
cooler or freezer,” said Riten- 11 that same morning, it’s up
our. “So we put a new one on At this Pizza Hut store, the current and running. It’s just a matter
the back end of the store. As Polar King walk-in is attached in a of hooking up the electrical
soon as that is functional, we “through-wall” configuration, while and they’re ready for use.”
tear out the existing coolers and an older unit has been converted Like every foodservice
freezers. That gives us more dry- to dry storage. The convenient and next to one operation, each of Ritenour’s Pizza Hut
efficient walk-ins free up back-of-the-
storage or prep area.” house space for storage or food prep. of his cur- units has its unique needs, so his cool-
For nearly 35 years, he has rent stores. ers and freezers are customized to meet
looked to Polar King to provide “The exist- those needs. “Every one of my units is
his outdoor cooler and freezer solutions. ing store had a Polar King unit on the custom — different heights, different
One of his main reasons for choosing back end of it,” Ritenour said. “Before slopes of the roof, different lengths,
Polar King units is their durability. “They we demolished the old store, we had different location of the doorways,” he
hold up better over time,” he said. the Polar King unit picked up because said. “A lot of our stores will have two
As proof, he gives the example we’re going to use it at another store double doors of glass; some even have
of a new Pizza Hut store being built this spring. The box they picked up is 25 three double doors.”