With the True 48, a Commercial Kitchen Comes Home

High-end consumers who demand nothing but the best from their kitchens have a new choice for a refrigerator—as long as they’ve got about $20,000 to spare.

The True 48 is a new, 48-inch wide refrigerator from True, a company best known for manufacturing commercial refrigeration products for restaurants and grocery stores. It’s based on the smaller True 42, introduced last spring, but adds an additional six inches of width.

This clearly isn’t a fridge for the masses. In addition to a $19,999 MSRP, it has a distinctly industrial aesthetic, giant crisper drawers, shelves large enough for caterers’ pans, dual evaporators, and dual compressors.

The exterior is stainless. The interior is stainless. And (in what could redeem one of Steven Spielberg’s more controversial plot devices) the hinges are so sturdy that the True 48 might actually be a good place to hide out during a nuclear blast.

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{{amazon name="Catering Essentials Foil Pans", asin="B001UBE7KC", align="left"}} Despite its industrial-strength build quality, there are a few differences between the True 48 and what True builds for kitchens at, say, Morton’s—or even the coffee shop where I’m writing this article.

For instance, commercial customers demand easy-to-clean wire shelves throughout, but the residential model has door bins and glass shelving. The home version also needed to be tweaked to meet the Department of Energy’s requirements for residential installation.

Even with those changes, the True 48 is pretty much the closest residential customers can get to chilling like the pros. And for those whose homes double as venues for fundraisers and A-List parties, it might be a smart investment.

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