When you are in the restaurant business, keeping a fresh stock of ingredients on hand is ever important, and a lot of these ingredients will have to be stowed away in the restaurant cooler for safekeeping. Since most bulk ingredients are shipped in cardboard boxes, most restaurants just store their ingredients in their original cardboard box in the cooler. However, transferring the product to polycarbonate boxes with lids is a much better option. Here is a look at three reasons why it is advantageous to store your restaurant ingredients in these clear containers with airtight lids. 

Prevent contamination caused by dirty shipping boxes

Shipping boxes go through a lot before they eventually end up in your restaurant cooler. From the manufacturer to your door, they are handled many times by many different hands during transport and delivery. Because of this they can come in contact with all kinds of nasty germs. By getting rid of those cardboard boxes immediately upon delivery and storing the ingredients in clean polycarbonate boxes instead, you will be lowering the possibility of contaminating your cooler with the germs that could be hanging out on the outside of the delivery boxes. 

Keep food ingredients visible for easy access

Cardboard boxes offer no visibility of the product inside. This means that when your employees go to the cooler to retrieve something, they are left to read every description on boxes or open all the boxes to find what it is they are going after. But if an ingredient is neatly stored in a clear polycarbonate box with lid, the contents inside the each box will be perfectly visible. This storage method is useful both for everyday product retrieval and for monitoring the condition and appearance of ingredients. It also makes counting for inventory purposes easier. 

Ensure the food stays fresh for longer

Cardboard boxes do little in the way of keeping products fresh. Cardboard is not an airtight material, and, even worse, it is not very resilient to moisture. Therefore, if you have ingredients that will be stored for a while before they are used up, keeping them in a cardboard box is not the best method. Some refrigerated foods will absorb odors and flavors from neighboring foods if they are not stored in good containers. Polycarbonate boxes are airtight, and even the lid locks in place. Therefore, you will be able to keep those fresh foods tasting and smelling fresh for much longer.