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How much ice do you actually need?
Five steps, about three minutes. Undersize a machine and someone's buying bagged ice on a Saturday afternoon. Oversize it and you've paid for capacity you'll never use.
01. Start with your venue
Find your closest match and multiply by covers, rooms or beds. These are the benchmarks the industry works to.
Venue | Ice per day | Per |
|---|---|---|
Restaurant | 0.7 – 0.9 kg | customer |
Bar or cocktail lounge | 1.4 kg | seat, busy night |
Beer and wine bar | 0.45 kg | patron |
Cafe | 0.16 – 0.27 kg | iced drink sold |
Quick service | 0.25 – 0.45 kg | customer |
Self-serve drink dispenser | 0.9 – 1.4 kg | customer |
Hotel or motel | 2.3 kg | room per night |
Hospital or clinic | 3.2 – 4.5 kg | occupied bed |
Aged care | 2.7 kg | resident |
Canteen or cafeteria | 0.45 kg | person |
Office | 0.7 kg | employee |
Catering and functions | 0.9 kg | head |
Seafood or produce display | 0.5 kg | litre of display bed |
Chilling fresh fish | 0.34 kg | kg of fish, from 30°C |
02. Size for your busiest day
Not an average Tuesday. Pick a demanding day that happens most weeks, then add headroom: 20–25% for most venues, 10–15% if trade barely moves week to week, 25–30% if you’re outdoors, seasonal or running events.
Quick test on a machine you already have: if the bin empties faster than the machine refills it in three to four hours, it’s undersized — whatever the spec sheet says.
03. Take off for the heat
Every production figure you’ll see — ours included — is measured at 21°C air and 10°C water. A back-of-house in Perth in February is not 21°C.
19%
Typical output lost in a hot room. We compared the rated and hot-ambient figures for all 87 machines in our range that publish both. Best case loses 3%. Worst case loses 34%.
Hoshizaki 19% · Ice-O-Matic 20% · Lassele 19% · Follett 10%
In an air-conditioned bar you’ll see close to the rated figure. In a hot kitchen, plan on about a fifth less. The spread between models is wide enough to be worth asking us about.
04. Match the bin
A bin doesn’t need to hold a full day’s ice, and buying one that does is an expensive mistake. It only has to cover the gap between how fast you take ice out and how fast the machine puts it back.
44%
What manufacturers actually pair. Across the 49 self-contained machines we sell — where the factory has already chosen the matched bin — the median bin holds a little under half a day’s production.
Go bigger if demand arrives in a rush, if the machine can’t recover overnight, or if you’re bagging ice. Go smaller if draw is steady all day.
05. Pick the ice type
This matters more than most buyers expect. It changes how a drink looks, how fast it chills, and how well ice holds a fillet of fish.
Full cube
Spirits on the rocks, mixed drinks, bagging. Melts slowly, so it chills without watering the drink down.
Half cube
Fountain drinks and high-volume service. Packs tightly, so it displaces more liquid and chills fast.
Crescent
Restaurants, hotels, general bar work. Clear and slow-melting, and the curved shape resists bridging in bins.
Gourmet
Premium spirits and upscale cocktails. Each piece is formed on its own, so it comes out clear and conical, doesn't stick together and scoops easily.
Nugget
Healthcare, quick service, iced coffee. Soft and chewable, and displaces a lot of liquid for its weight.
Flake
Seafood and produce display, food transport. Huge contact area and no sharp edges to bruise product.
Sub-zero flake
Meat, poultry, seafood and bakery processing. Made below zero, so it's dry and adds less water to product.
Speciality ice
Signature cocktails and premium whisky. Spheres, spears and diamonds, formed clear as single large pieces, so they melt slowest of all.
Worked example
A 90-seat restaurant, 200 covers on a good night | |
|---|---|
With a bin around 44% of that | 85 kg |
200 covers × 0.8 kg | 160 kg |
Add 20% for the busy day | 192 kg |
Hot kitchen, add back the 19% you’ll lose | 237 kg |
Look for a machine rated around | 240 kg / 24hrs |
Not sure where you land?
Tell us your covers, rooms or beds and how the ice gets used. We’ll size it properly rather than sell you the nearest number.
Where these numbers come from. The venue benchmarks are the established industry figures, converted to kilograms. Where sources disagreed we’ve given the range rather than picked a flattering number.
The 19% and 44% are ours — calculated from the published ratings of all 162 machines we sell, not borrowed from overseas averages.
These are planning estimates. Ambient temperature, water quality and how you actually use the ice all move the answer.