Commercial Shelving

Shelving is the one purchase every kitchen makes and almost nobody plans, which is why so much of it ends up in the wrong place holding the wrong thing. The first decision is where a unit lives. A floor run in the storeroom takes the heavy, slow-moving stock: cases of cans, bags of flour, bulk oil. A wall shelf over the line holds what a cook reaches for on a ticket, so it wants to be shallow and close, not deep and loaded. Below both sits dunnage, the low rack whose only job is to keep the bottom case off the floor, because product on the floor fails a health inspection and a pallet of cans on a wall shelf pulls the brackets out of the wall.

The second decision is open, solid or locked. Open wire shelving lets air move around pans and dry goods, which is why it is the default floor run in a storeroom and the right choice anywhere product needs to breathe. A solid shelf belongs where spills happen or where small items would fall through a grid, so it earns a place under prep and in chemical storage rather than across the whole room. Where liquor, tobacco or anything else has to be locked, a caged unit does what an open run cannot, and it is cheaper to buy one cage than to rebuild a room around a padlock.

Some loads want their own rack rather than a shelf. Sheet pans stack cleanly only on edge, on a rack built with runners, and a flat shelf turns them into a leaning pile. Kegs are heavy, round and wet, and a dry-goods shelf is neither rated nor shaped for them. Wall shelves over the line have the opposite limit: they carry light, frequent items well and heavy stock badly, so the temptation to store cases up there is one to resist.

The last decision is the room itself. A walk-in cooler is wet and cold, and ordinary dry-storage chrome corrodes in it, so cooler shelving is a different finish and a different purchase. Leave enough aisle between runs for a cart to pass, keep the lowest shelf off the floor, and size shelf depth to what will actually sit on it rather than to the widest unit in the catalog. We feature top-quality brands such as Quantum Food Service, Metro, Cambro, Olympic, and John Boos, and strive to provide the most competitive prices available.