Published 7 September 2026 · Written by Alan Refrigeration Services · Verified by Alan Law, Food Safety Specialist
In Singapore, your SFA licence is your right to trade, and refrigeration is one of the things an inspection looks at closely. The good news: a fridge that genuinely does its job makes passing routine.
Nothing below is a trick. It is the same short list that keeps your food safe on an ordinary Tuesday, written down so you can walk it yourself before an officer does.
Where cold storage is concerned, an officer is really asking three questions:
Notice that all three are about the food and the cabinet it sits in, not the badge on the door. That is good news for you. Every one of them is something you can see, touch or measure on any morning of the week.
Most of what an officer finds, you could have found the morning before. Build these habits into the daily routine and inspection day becomes a repeat of something you already did.
Good habits get you most of the way. But if the unit simply cannot hold temperature, a tired compressor, thin insulation, a fridge that warms up every time the door opens, you are fighting it at every inspection.
A kitchen here can run at 38°C and 70% humidity, and every door opening lets that air in. Every door opening starts a clock. A basic on/off compressor lets the temperature climb after each opening and pulls it back slowly. Through the 12 to 2pm rush, with the door opening every minute, it may not pull it back at all. Cold is easy. Holding it steady is the hard part.
What to look for is not complicated. An inverter compressor, so the unit works harder after the door has been open and settles when it has not, and the temperature stays flat, which is what protects your food. Even forced-air cooling, so the top shelf and the bottom shelf hold close to the same temperature. A digital controller with a clear display, so the daily log is a glance rather than a guess. Insulation thick enough that the compressor is not running flat out all afternoon. None of this is exotic, and all of it turns inspection day from a worry into a formality.
Forty years of repairs taught Alan which machines hardly ever call him back. The pattern is not subtle. A unit that drifts warm on a hot afternoon is not going to behave differently because an officer is standing in front of it. One repair is normal. A second or third in a year is the unit telling you it is done, and that is the honest moment to ask whether it can still do the job. Age alone is not the test. Holding temperature is. A properly serviced second-hand unit that holds steady through service is a sound buy; a tired one that drifts is not, whatever its age.
Equipment is the first line of defence of food safety. The habits are yours. The holding is the fridge’s. Get both right and the officer’s three questions have three easy answers, hour after hour, door after door, service after service. Every plate carries your name.
Tell us what you store, the space you have and your busiest hours. We will tell you which unit actually holds through a full service, and which tier your menu actually needs.
Chilled food should sit at 4°C or below and frozen food at −18°C. Check with a thermometer inside the cabinet, not the dial, because the dial only shows the setting.
Three things: whether food is held at a safe temperature, whether the unit is clean and in good condition with sound door seals, and whether raw food is kept apart from ready-to-eat food.
A kitchen here can run at 38°C and 70% humidity, and every door opening lets that air in. A tired compressor, thin insulation or a slack gasket means the unit cannot recover between openings, so the temperature drifts warm through the rush.
Usually not. Clean interiors, sound gaskets, a thermometer and a daily log get most kitchens through. The fridge only decides it when the unit cannot hold temperature no matter how well you run it.