What should be the placement and circulation flow of the open refrigerated display cabinet?
The layout of the open refrigerated display cabinet needs to consider both the customer side and the working side, not just include the equipment in the floor plan as if it’s complete. When fresh food stores want customers to easily browse open refrigerated shelves, actions such as viewing, picking up, replenishing, and cleaning often occur around the equipment. The focus of the planning is to ensure these actions can be seamlessly connected in the same space, rather than simply aiming for neat equipment arrangement.
Mark the entrance, air conditioning supply, heat sources, and restocking stops around the cabinet on the diagram. Site conditions should be confirmed by equipment personnel. Do not treat all space in front of the cabinet as available space for promotional boxes. During measurement, record the wall columns, door openings, fixing facilities, and channels planned to be retained. Do not directly consider the blank areas in the photos as available locations. The range after opening the cabinet doors, drawers, or other movable components also needs to be verified. The usage area of the equipment and the positions required for professional maintenance should be clearly defined separately.
If a restocking box is temporarily placed near the open refrigerated display cabinet, employees may think it’s a short stay, but it may become a permanent storage point over time. Mark the temporary parking area and the accessible area required by the equipment on the diagram, indicating when it must be removed and who is responsible. When determining layout issues, first observe which action or time period causes the conflict, then discuss whether to adjust the equipment or the operation position. If only the orientation of the cabinet is changed without organizing the surrounding materials, the original waiting or detour problems may still occur.
It is recommended to conduct a simple simulation using actual containers, trolleys, or empty packaging. Regarding leafy vegetable packaging, boxed ready-to-eat items, refrigerated beverages, and short-shelf turnover products, demonstrate replenishment, retrieval, and organization separately, and record whether employees need to turn around repeatedly, whether labels are hard to see, and whether they intersect with the customer waiting area. Open display emphasizes easy access, but stores should not only focus on filling the space; The visible quantity, restocking frequency, and display methods allowed by the equipment need to be determined together; Write down these observations next to the floor plan, which makes it easier to achieve consistent understanding than simply describing ‘a bit more spacious’.
Before the plan is finalized, have the equipment supplier review the installation conditions based on on-site photos and dimensions. The space, supporting facilities, and surrounding environment required for the equipment should be specified according to the selected model, not inferred from photos from other stores. Check the actual configuration of shelf count, lighting, baffles, and control panel, and require the delivery documents to correspond to specific model numbers. Provide the installation environment and loading requirements given by the manufacturer to the store manager to prevent procurement documents from staying in the office. If renovations or changes occur to the product layout, the original drawings must be updated, and affected areas should be re-verified to ensure the actual implementation matches the original plan.
