Your restaurant ice machine tirelessly works in the background, churning out pound upon pound of ice to your servers, bartenders, and staff. If you’ve got no mechanical aptitude, what are the three biggest things that you can do to help keep it running?
Read the manual
The single most important thing that you can do to help the function of any mechanical item like a commercial ice machine is to read the owner’s manual. Here, you can find operational parameters for the machine as well as recommended maintenance schedules and other useful items. This is the lifeline to the machine, and should be read from cover to cover.
Observation
Look at the machine. Take in the sounds and the meter readings. Are these readings coming out a little high? Is the machine making sounds that you’ve never heard before? Is it sounding a little clunky when it’s dumping ice, or is the ice that your ice machine is producing not up to par? That might be the indication that there’s a problem brewing… you might want to schedule a service appointment.
Cleaning
After you’ve read your manual, you’ve got a good idea of the cleaning substances that you can use for your commercial ice machine. It’s time to put in the elbow grease and get the inside of your ice machine bin cleaned out and sanitized. With a sanitized bin, you’re preventing all types of nasties from getting a hold of your ice machine.
While we do understand that the owner’s manual for ice machines are boring, it helps to have a good understanding of how the machine runs so that you can observe it and clean it. These three tips will help you get far.
