What is the best Ice Maker for the money?

Simply stated: Hoshizaki.

Why?

Let me start by telling you something that is really important. Most of the time when people buy restaurant equipment, they think that the best buy is the machine that costs them the least amount of money to purchase. They are wrong. The best buy is the machine that will last the longest with the fewest amount of repairs.

I don’t care what service agency you call, for a competent ice machine repair guy, you are going to have to pay around $75.00 per hour. So if that is the case, it might be a good idea to buy a machine that almost never breaks and the machine that once it does break, is fast to diagnosis and even faster to repair.

You have to agree that whenever you are paying $100.00 per hour when you get done with the whole thing of parts labor and tax; that’s a lot of money.

The top leaders in the ice machine business are Hoshizaki, Manitowoc, Scotsman and Ice-o-matic. When you are shopping for an ice machine and you check prices, you will find that the prices for the same size ice machine are pretty munch the same plus or minus a couple hundred dollars. So if that is the case, which one do you think would be the better value; the one that last 5 to 7 years or the one that lasts 20 years.

In San Antonio Texas, there is a major restaurant chain called Church’s chicken which we have had the privilege of doing some work for. And; 95% of all their ice machines are 18 to 20 years old and they are all Hoshizaki and they are still making ice strong.

Further more let me tell you a secret.

Once I had a client who complained to me about his ice machine that it was always breaking and he was tired of it and wanted to buy a new one. (We were not the repair agency for this person at the time) He asked me for a bid for a Manitowoc which we wound up selling him. He asked me if I wanted the Hoshizaki. I gave him $150.00 for it.

I repaired this ice machine and leased it to one of my customers for $100.00 per month. That was 5 years ago. Get the picture. IN 5 years the only thing I have done to this ice machine is clean it and put in one water pump. Is Hoshizaki a good machine? I think so.

Most of the time, regardless of whether it is an ice machine or any other appliance, when a technician is having trouble in fixing something; it just means that he is a bad tech and really doesn’t know what he is doing.

Hoshizaki’s are so simple to fix because of their computer with the self diagnostics. And so few things break with a Hoshizaki, we really only need to carry about 4 parts on our truck to fix 99% of all the Hoshizaki’s that ever break.

You can buy any ice machine you want, but I have been in this business for over 20 years and I know what breaks all the time and I know what never breaks.

There is one big problem with Hoshizaki that I will tell you about that really bothers me.

The one big problem I have is that I really do not make a lot of money from Hoshizaki because it almost never breaks.