Viridian is a cocktail bar in Oakland with a serious program and the back-bar to match. When we got the first call the bar was running a stack of refrigeration that had not been deep-serviced in a long time. Several units were drifting warm. One kegerator was tripping its breaker under load. The under-counter glass chiller was cycling every few minutes and could not pull down to spec.
We do not walk into a job like this and quote a single fix. We map the house first. For Viridian that meant a unit-by-unit inventory of every refrigerated piece behind the bar and in the prep area: Perlick back-bar refrigeration, Hoshizaki ice production, a kegerator stack, an under-counter glass chiller, and a reach-in for prep batches. Each unit got a head-pressure check, a condenser inspection, a refrigerant verification, and an amp-draw reading at startup and steady state.
What we did
- Deep-cleaned every condenser. Two were caked badly enough to read three times their rated amp draw at startup
- Replaced two evaporator fan motors and one condenser fan that were already drawing high and would have failed inside a year
- Found a refrigerant slow-leak on the kegerator condensing unit, located it at a vibration-worn flare, recovered, repaired, evacuated, and recharged to spec
- Replaced two contactor coils that were chattering at startup
- Calibrated thermostats on the prep reach-in and the back-bar units to match the bar manager’s actual hold targets
- Replaced one water inlet valve on the ice machine where the strainer was packed with mineral
We were on site across two visits. The bar stayed open the whole time.
The maintenance plan
After the rebuild we put Viridian on a quarterly cycle. Every 90 days we walk through and do a condition pass: condensers cleaned, harvest cycles verified on ice production, water filters replaced, refrigerant pressures sanity-checked, thermostats spot-validated against a calibrated reference. A bar this busy does not get to wait until something fails on a Friday night.
Why we lead with this job
Two reasons. First, it is the cleanest example of what we want commercial refrigeration work to look like: full house, real diagnosis, no temporary fixes, no leaving with a unit limping. Second, Viridian referred us to NISEI restaurant in San Francisco, which holds a Michelin star. That referral is how this business grows. We do the work well at one place, and the people who run that place know other people who run kitchens.
If you operate a bar or restaurant in the Bay Area and you need a refrigeration service that does the full picture instead of the cheapest immediate fix, call (925) 999-4095 or use the booking form. We can run the same playbook for your house.
