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The Case for Cabinet Frames

Published: November 11, 2024

A frameless clear clean glass front on a food display cabinet can be very attractive. After all, you can see through glass from every direction and see the products on offer.

However, like all things, there are pros and cons and whether a frameless cabinet is right for you will depend on a number of variables. Here is our take …

  1. Check the quality of the glass. In most cases it will be single glazed ‘normal’ glass or even acrylic which lack insulating properties. Particularly for products requiring to be held at specific core product temperatures, any variation in the temperature performance of the cabinet may compromise the quality of your products and reduce shelf life, or worse, render them unsafe. 
  2. Check your HVAC system. Because of the lack of insulating properties of single glazed glass or acrylic, it’s absolutely vital that your HVAC system is top notch and maintains climate class 3 conditions (25°C/60% RH). If you find your HVAC system struggles with variable humidity and temperature throughout the year, a single glazed cabinet may prove to be a very poor investment.
  3. Self-Serve or Serve-Over? Frameless cabinets generally do have a supporting frame on the staff side of the cabinet. It is needed for fitting doors to enable access for stocking and cleaning. The lack of a frame on the customer-facing side means there is no infrastructure to connect sliding or swing doors. That means in most scenarios the frameless front glass will only support serve-over cabinets. 

FPG cabinets are designed to optimise both aesthetics and performance.

  • We build the majority of our cabinets with low-E coated double-glazed glass to provide much better insulation. This glass delivers better energy efficiency and tighter temperature ranges. Double-glazed glass needs a frame for finishing. 
  • Frames and masking hide joints, wires, assemblies, and sealant. They provide a smart professional appearance.
  • Frames provide the infrastructure to support features such as lighting
  • Framing adds strength to the cabinet.  Together with capping and trim, they provide breakage protection. Frameless glass is exposed and more vulnerable to knocking with trays, trolleys, utensils and more.
  • Frames provide options. You may start with a serve-over operation, but later change to self-serve. With many FPG cabinets it is possible to swap out the front to change customer access as your business model evolves. 
  • FPG stands behind our cabinets for their lifetime, and our cabinets are built to last. You can’t beat that!

What does the market think?

While we see increasing use of frameless display cabinets, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, across our local markets of Australia and New Zealand, serve-over cabinets only represent a small part of the market – we estimate ~10%. The remaining 90% are self-serve. Labour costs and staffing shortages are contributing to this significant trend down-under. Even for those opting for serve-over, we suspect that our customers want the optimum combination of aesthetics and performance. They trust FPG to deliver on both.

Want to find out more?
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