How to store fresh vegetables and fruits in a restaurant kitchen
Published 15/10/2026 · NutriDelight
Practical storage rules for restaurant and hotel kitchens: what goes in the cold room, what stays out, how to handle leafy greens, and simple ways to cut vegetable wastage.
Check it at the door
Storage starts when the delivery arrives. Count and weigh against the invoice, check leafy greens and soft fruit first, and set anything damaged aside with a photo. Problems found the next afternoon are much harder to sort out than problems found at the door.
Keep in the cold room or fridge
- Leafy greens and herbs — dhaniya, pudina, palak, methi: wrap loosely in a damp cloth or paper, do not pack them tight.
- Capsicum, beans, peas, carrot, cauliflower, cabbage, cucumber, zucchini, broccoli and mushrooms.
- Cut fruit and cut vegetables — in covered, labelled containers with the date.
- Berries and grapes — unwashed until use.
Keep out of the fridge
- Onion, garlic and potato — cool, dark, dry and airy; store onion and potato apart, as potatoes spoil faster next to onions.
- Tomatoes — on a rack until ripe, then use or chill for a day or two.
- Bananas, mangoes, papaya and other fruit that is still ripening.
- Pumpkin, ash gourd and whole melons until they are cut.
Simple habits that cut wastage
- First in, first out — new stock goes behind old stock, every time.
- Order for the next day's covers, not for the week; daily delivery means you do not need to hold stock.
- Keep apart the fruits that ripen others (banana, apple, tomato) from leafy greens.
- Use trimmings — stalks for stock, peels for chutneys where the menu allows.
- Write down what is thrown away for a week; it shows which items you over-order.
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