Metro Pure Water
People usually open with the ice type. It is the wrong end of the question. There are two to three hundred workable configurations once you account for heads, bins, air or water cooling and voltage, and the way to narrow that down is to ask where the ice actually ends up.
Start with the application
Cups at a break room fountain, cold brew on tap, medical sample transport, or three drivers filling igloo coolers at the 7 a.m. rush are four completely different machines. Headcount and shift pattern matter as much as the ice shape.
Then the ice type
Nugget is soft, chewable and the one people ask for by name. Cube lasts longer in a drink and comes in small, medium and large. Round or hole cube displaces well in a cup. Flake suits salad bars and fish markets, and we can get it on request, though we do not stock it.
How it gets dispensed matters more than people expect
Scooping from an open bin invites cross contamination and demands more frequent cleaning. That is fine when the ice is going into a cooler. It is a real problem when it is going into a cup.
The maintenance question
This is where bought machines go wrong. Cleaning lands on an already busy maintenance tech’s list, at the bottom, and that is how ice machines end up with mold. We own every machine we place, so the cleaning schedule is ours to keep.
