Commercial Wine Coolers - Restaurants & Bars

Commercial wine fridges are used in bars, restaurants, offices and board rooms to keep wine at the optimum temperature for service or storage. Any hospitality business that sells wine, by the bottle or by the glass, needs a wine fridge. To find out which commercial wine cooler is best for your bar or restaurant; read on.

Commercial wine coolers in restaurants and large bars tend to be freestanding with dual zone controls for the service of both red and white wine or for selling bottles directly to the public at storage or service temperature. 

Smaller bars generally only have room for a small freestanding or undercounter wine cooler or even a tabletop wine cooler if only a few bottles are kept; needed for serving by the glass.

As restaurant and bar interiors are generally stylised, the aesthetics of the wine cabinets are usually important with display shelves, mahogany wood, smart LED lighting and the choice of black or stainless steel wine coolers frequent requests.

Another important feature, especially for a restaurant or bar selling fine/mature wines, is that the wine fridge is lockable. Commercial locations are public facing and the ability to lock the wine cabinet is important.

The most requested feature for commercial wine coolers though is that they accurately hold set temperatures. Service temperature of Champagne is often particularly important, so too White Burgundy, so it's important you can rely on the quality and accuracy of the brand and the fridge.

Commercial wine coolers are opened and utilised with much greater frequency than a home wine fridge so it's important the build is solid and reliable and the mechanical parts of the fridge are efficient at bringing the fridge to temperature quickly.

Some brands are designed with commercial settings in mind, we highly recommend Swisscave wine fridges for reliability, durability and aesthetics, and we have installed these units at the Savoy Hotel in London, several locations of the Gordon Ramsay chain and the Four Seasons Hotel in Knightsbridge. The Vin Garde wine cabinet range are also perfectly adapted to commercial use and are a reliable British brand. 

Commercial Wine Fridge Locations

Commercial wine coolers come in many sizes, from tabletop wine fridges for small bars to 300 bottle capacity, man sized, wine cabinets with multi temperature zones.

No different to a home setting, the installation and location (allocated space) for your commercial wine fridge will dictate the type of unit you'll buy, the three types of commercial wine fridges are freestanding wine fridges, built-in wine fridges and integrated wine fridges.

Freestanding wine coolers need at least 2-3 inches of space around their sides for ventilation and 30cm above so can not be build in to cabinetry. Built-in wine fridges can be built-in to cabinetry and vent from a front, bottom panel that must be kept clear. Integrated wine fridges are generally raised off the floor and built directly into a kitchen, like an integrated oven, for example. Whether you need a commercial wine cooler for an office, restaurant or bar, you'll need to be sure that the ventilation of the wine fridge matches the space allocated for it.

What's important in a commercial wine fridge?

Security and functionality - before anything else a commercial wine fridge must be secure with a lockable door and accurately keep its programmed temperature. All commercial wine coolers have alarms that will alert their owner to issues with temperature regulation.

Durability - The doors on commercial wine fridges are open and shut many times a day in busy restaurants. These fridges need to have a solid casing, be easy to open and close, telescopic shelves are also an advantage so wait staff can access bottle quickly and easily.

Temperature Zones - Most commercial wine fridges are dual zone to allow for the service of red and white wine plus Champagne. It is quite common for larger restaurants to dedicate a single zone tall unit to reds and then another tall dual zone wine cabinet split by white wine and Champagne.

Style - All of our commercial wine fridges are from premium brands and look great, however some brands go the extra mile in the style stakes with colour-changing LED lighting, mahogany wood shelving, display shelves and stainless steel casing. If your wine bar or restaurant is up market with a bespoke design, it's likely you'll want to choose a fridge whose style and quality is in-keeping with the rest of the interiors.

Best wine fridge for a restaurant?

Our most commonly sold wine fridge to high end restaurants is the Swisscave WLB-460-DF-MIX due to the premium look and feel, telescopic shelves, lockable door, dual zone and durable build.

However, the best wine fridge for your restaurant will depend on many factors completely unique to your specific space, wine list and budget.

Best wine fridge for a bar?

Our most commonly sold wine fridge to wine bars is the La Sommeliere ECS80.2Z. This mid height, lockable, dual zone wine cooler offers enough wine storage space for most bars and smaller restaurants.

Many bars only have space for a small unit, often kept on top of a counter-top, in that case Dunavox's tabletop range can be a great choice too.

What is the bottle capacity of a commercial wine cooler?

There are commercial wine coolers for small bars on the market that hold just two open bottles. The Eurocave wine art is such a example of a two bottle, service wine cooler. There are also wine cabinets in our collection that can hold over 300 bottles. These larger commercial wine cabinets tend to come in either dual or multi-zones.

The most common size of commercial wine fridge sold to restaurants of 50 covers or more are the tall, freestanding units. Smaller bars and restaurants generally go in for 100 bottle wine coolers from brands like Climadiff or La Sommeliere. These brands are still premium, but also space saving for the smaller commercial space.

Can a bar or restaurant wine fridge hold Champagne?

The most frequent question asked to our wine cooler experts via live chat is 'which commercial wine fridge is best for Champagne'. 

Any of our commercial wine coolers can keep Champagne at the right temperature, but some have more height between shelves than others. This is important because Champagne bottles tend to have a wide diameter and require a couple of cm of extra height between shelves. In the case of needing to keep several bottles of Champagne at a set temperature, we recommend the Swisscave, Dunavox or Vin Garde ranges.