Self-Contained Ice Machines

Choosing a commercial ice machine

Size by customers served, not by seats. Fifty seats can mean fifty covers on a dinner-only night or two hundred in a high-turnover room, and the ice demand follows the covers, not the chairs.

Quick sizing guide. Allow roughly 0.7–0.9 kg of ice per customer served for a full-service restaurant, and around 1.3 kg per bar seat per day for a busy bar or cocktail venue. Cafés vary more widely depending on iced-drink sales, so daily drink volume is usually a better guide than seating capacity. Hotels run about 2.3 kg per occupied room per day; healthcare and aged care about 4.5 kg per bed per day. Always size for your busiest trading day, not your average day.

Peak-day customers × 0.7–0.9 kg  +  bar, display and prep ice  +  a safety margin  =  target daily production

Example. A restaurant serving 120 customers on its busiest day may need roughly 85–110 kg of ice per day before allowing for bar use, food display or additional peak-demand buffer.

Production and storage are two different numbers. A 100 kg/24h rating does not mean 100 kg is sitting there when the rush hits. The machine keeps making ice through the peak, but production is spread across the day while demand is not — so the storage bin is what carries you through service. Look at both figures, and if you are at the top of a self-contained bin's capacity, consider a modular head on a separate ice storage bin instead.

Don't size right on the limit. A machine's rated output is measured at a specified ambient air temperature and incoming water temperature. In a hot kitchen, or with warmer incoming water, real output falls below the plate rating — so leave headroom above your calculated peak-day figure rather than buying exactly to it.

Cube, flake or nugget? Cube ice is the default for bars, restaurants and drinks service — it melts slowly and looks clean in a glass. Flake ice is for display and chilling: seafood, meat and produce counters, where the ice has to pack around the product without bruising it. Nugget ice is soft and chewable, which suits soft-drink service, drinks generally, and healthcare or aged care. We stock all three.

Where it goes. Ours are 334 mm to 1,262 mm wide. Most under-bench and back-bar spots take a 500–700 mm cabinet; the wide ones are floor-standing units for volume sites. These are refrigeration machines — they need airflow around the condenser and a way to get rid of waste water. Where the site cannot drain by gravity, you need a pump: see our underbench ice machines with drain pump.

What you get from us. From $915 ex-GST for a compact under-bench maker up to $16,498 for a high-volume machine, across Scotsman, Bromic, Hoshizaki, Blizzard and ICEMATIC. Stock is here — our own units in our warehouse, the agency brands held minutes away. What takes the time is testing, not sourcing: every unit is run up and checked before it leaves us, which is why we don't promise same-day dispatch. Sydney metro is same or next day once it's passed; we deliver Australia-wide. SilverChef Rent-Try-Buy is available if you would rather pay weekly.

Not sure what you need? Tell us your busiest-day covers and what the ice is for, and we will size it — including the bin, and including the headroom.