Keeping food and drink cold at weddings, festivals and shows

Summer is wedding and festival season across the UK — and it is also when temporary cold storage is hardest to find. A refrigerated container gives you a walk-in cold room you can drop beside the marquee, the bar or the catering tent, then hand back once the last guest has gone. This page looks at reefer hire from the event organiser’s side rather than as pure kit rental: what to book, when to book it, and how to run it on a field with no mains three-phase. EuroReefer is an editorial comparison site — we hold no stock, no depot and no fleet; we scope the need and pass your request to specialist suppliers.

Why events book their reefers early

Demand peaks from May to September, when weddings, food-and-drink festivals, county shows, village fêtes and farmers’ markets all chase the same pool of units. The single most useful thing you can do is enquire as soon as your date is fixed — weeks ahead, not days.

Hire terms are the other reason to move early. Long-term rates start at around £12 a day ex VAT, but an event is short-term, which is priced on a different basis. Many UK suppliers set a minimum hire term, and a 90-day minimum is common; some, though, do offer genuine weekend or weekly hire at a higher daily rate. Asking early gives you time to compare the offers on price, minimum term and delivery access rather than take the first one you find.

What goes in: drinks versus ice cream

A reefer does two very different jobs at an event, and they pull in opposite directions.

Drinks are the easy win. Beer, wine, cider, soft drinks and mixers only need a steady chilled setpoint of roughly +2°C to +8°C. You can bring a bar’s entire stock down to temperature overnight and hold it there all day, which lifts a huge load off the bar staff and frees the pumps and fridges for service.

Ice cream and frozen desserts are harder. They need a deep-freeze setpoint near -18°C — a standard reefer runs its range down to -25°C, so the capability is there — but every door opening during service lets warm air in, and a busy servery opens the door constantly. Where frozen stock matters, keep it in a separate unit, limit door openings and brief staff to restock in quick bursts.

Sizing the unit to the event

Match the box to the guest count and the length of the event, and remember that a reefer’s interior is smaller than a dry container of the same size — the insulation takes thickness off the walls, ceiling and floor, so plan a little tighter than the headline volume.

If you are torn between two sizes, the larger unit costs more to hire and run but spares you a mid-event resupply run — worth it once an event passes a couple of days.

Power on site: the three-phase problem

This is where event hire trips people up. Most reefers run on three-phase 380/400V through a CEE 32A five-pin socket and draw 5–12 kW depending on size. Very few event fields have three-phase to hand, so you have three routes: a generator sized to the unit, a smaller unit that runs on 230V single-phase, or a temporary mains connection where the venue allows it.

If you go the generator route, size it with headroom for the compressor’s start-up surge, and budget fuel for the daily draw — roughly 70–170 kWh a day depending on format. Always confirm which supply the specific unit needs before you hire the generator; the socket and phase requirement vary by model and cold unit (Carrier, Thermo King, Daikin and Star Cool are the common makes).

Food safety, kept in proportion

HACCP duties and local environmental-health expectations vary by authority, so treat them as something to check rather than assume, and speak to your local authority or event officer in good time. In practice the container’s job is simple: it holds the cold chain on the field so chilled and frozen stock stays safe through a hot day. One thing to keep straight — ATP certification covers refrigerated transport, not a static unit parked behind the bar, so a stationary cold room does not need it.

Getting quotes for your date

When you enquire, give suppliers the dates, the site’s power situation, the size you think you need and the setpoint. We pass your request to specialist reefer suppliers who get back to you directly if they can meet your need — the exchange does not run through us. From there you can request a quote for your exact dates, weigh up short-term hire against the options, and read the buyer’s guides if a recurring events business might be better off owning a unit than hiring one each season.