grocery operations • refrigeration BY KEVIN PIEL Director of Business Development, KPS Global Cold CASE Choosing the best insulated-panel system is paramount in ensuring optimal climate-controlled operation in many different applications. BY JOE MCMENAMIN Director of E-Commerce, KPS Global T he days when grocery shopping was solely an in-person, on-site event that involved the maneuvering of a shopping trieve their orders by driving up to the store or hopping inside to collect them, but also at co-located sites or offsite like, for instance, at a nearby shopping mall. In this case, the order-storage so-lution may need to be suitable for use in outdoor environments that can, depending on the location, ex-perience extreme swings in temper-ature and climactic conditions. The offsite locations will also have to be fully (and reliably) automated since there won’t be a staff member avail-able to assist with any questions or diffi culties. has the highest R-value of any in-sulation used in the refrigeration industry and is able to produce an R-value of up to 8.06 per inch of thickness. • The insulated panels are outfi t-ted with a cam-lock system that enables them to be securely joined together via a cam-and-pin housing assembly that both forms a sturdy, unbreakable connection between individual panels while operating the system’s R-value. In other words, insulated panels are an ideal choice for food retailers who have built or are contemplat-ing adding an OGP operation. cart (wobbly wheel optional) through a maze of aisles featuring shelves stocked with a wide array of goods have come to an end. Technological advances had already begun to make gro-cery shopping from home much more accessible and appealing in recent years. Then came March 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic, com-plete with its lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, was a huge boost for the shop-from-home market segment in all industries. In the world of the supermarket, this phenomenon was called Online Grocery Pickup, or OGP. The main goal of OGP is to make sure that an online grocery order is fi lled for the customer in a timely and accurate manner, while not compromising food safety. Therefore, the physi-cal pickup site must feature a cli-mate-controlled cold-storage infra-structure that meets all the order accuracy, on-time delivery and food-safety demands of the customer. The main challenge in develop-ing an effective OGP cold-storage system is that there is no one-size-fi ts-all answer for the unique physi-cal infrastructure and footprint that each retrieval site possesses. Therefore, the companies that cre-ate climate-controlled cold-storage solutions for various OGP formats understand that managing and providing different cold-storage temperature levels are the founda-tion for a successful operation. The most basic OGP operation must have some form of cold stor-age to hold the groceries selected from the store for either customer pickup or delivery. More complex or larger OGP operations may need backroom storage coolers and freez-ers, assembly-line automation sys-tems and even robotic automation that can optimize the order-fi lling process. Additionally, there may soon come a day where grocery shoppers will not only be able to re-ANSWERING THE CALL In most cases, the OGP opera-tion will need walk-in coolers and/ or freezers to keep the purchased products at their proper tempera-ture before they are picked up. Our insulated panel systems employ a modular-design approach that makes the storage units high-ly adaptable and easy to install, whether a single-or multi-compart-ment unit is required. Each system is custom designed and engineered in house to meet the unique specifi -cations of the end user’s project. The innovative design system features two insulating panels con-structed of an exterior metal skin that is sandwiched around poured-in-place closed-cell polyurethane foam. This method of design and construction creates three main benefi ts for the user: • The insulated panels are highly energy-effi cient and have R-values (the ability to resist invasive energy fl ow) that are not only relevant to the specifi c project, but meet or ex-ceed industry standards. • Closed-cell polyurethane foam THAT’S NOT ALL, FOLKS While OGP is responsible for the most obvious expansion of the insulated-panel market in recent years, the truth is that climate-con-trolled cold-storage systems have been used for many years in a wide range of applications beyond the typical retail-grocery or foodservice niches. Four of these areas stand out as being ripe for the need for customized walk-in cooler/freezer or equipment-enclosure systems that can benefi t from being outfi t-ted with insulated panels. Let’s take a closer look at each: 1. Controlled Environment Rooms (CER): These structures are most commonly used as chambers for testing things such as electronic products or automobile tires. The operators of CERs will build the room, put in a heating/cooling/hu-midity unit and then manipulate the atmosphere to see how a prod-uct — for example, tires — will per-form under the stress of changing temperature and humidity condi-www.RetailRestaurantFB.com 18 RETAIL & RESTAURANT FACILITY BUSINESS FEBRUARY 2023