From old-fashioned cellars to today’s refrigerated transportation and massive temperature-controlled warehouses, keeping things cool is a multi-billion-dollar business steeped in technology and logistics.
Long before the convenience of grocery stores and home refrigeration, many of our ancestors preserved food through a variety of methods. Storing fruit and vegetables in a cool, dark root cellar was how countless generations kept food from spoiling and fed themselves and their families during challenging winters. Vegetables like beets and cucumbers were pickled in sterilized jars, with the contents remaining safe to eat for months, even years. For other foods, like potatoes, carrots, and turnips, cold cellars and root cellars were an ideal way to store produce long before electric refrigeration.
Although keeping food chilled in a root cellar seems straightforward, it required know-how and preparation. Some vegetables, like parsnips and carrots, needed a damp bedding for storage, usually sawdust, sand, or wood shavings. Other foods, like onions and garlic, had to be kept in drier conditions, while apples and pears had to be kept separate, because they release ethylene gas.
For years, cold cellars and root cellars proved to be a popular and practical way to store food longer, especially in isolated, rugged communities like Newfoundland’s town of Elliston. With a population of about 315 residents and an area just over 10 square kilometres, Elliston is famous for its many colourful puffins (Newfoundland’s official bird) and for being “The Root Cellar Capital of the World.”
Today, Elliston is home to more than 130 historic underground root cellars. Remarkably, about half of them still function, dating back almost 170 years. “These traditional food storage structures are built into hills and banks and were used to keep root vegetables, such as potatoes and carrots,” states the official Newfoundland and Labrador website. “Natural humidity keeps food cool in summer and frost–free in winter. They were integral to surviving the harsh winters and indicative of the food culture that still exists on these shores today.”
Keep it cool
While cold cellars served a purpose, they have been largely replaced by refrigeration. When we think of cold storage, many of us think of our refrigerators at home, or coolers in our local grocery stores. But the reality is much more complex. Over the decades, cold storage has evolved from small household root cellars to a system of modern refrigerated trucks and massive, temperature-controlled warehouses, and technology allows temperatures to be maintained precisely, helping prevent bacterial growth and unwelcome chemical reactions in everything from food to wine to pharmaceuticals.
A multi-billion-dollar sector involving refrigerated warehousing, transportation, grocery stores, restaurants, pharmacists, and consumers depends on precise cold storage to ensure product safety and quality. For fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy to remain fresh, for instance, they must be transported quickly and efficiently to reach distributors and coolers unspoiled and at peak freshness. Many medications, meanwhile, must be kept at precise temperatures to ensure they remain effective.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most notable examples was the vaccine itself. Depending on the manufacturer, some had to be stored at an exact frozen or refrigerated temperature range—sometimes at ultra-low temperatures (ULT) between -90°C and -60°C (-130°F and -76°F)—thawed at precise temperatures, kept away from light until use, and protected from “cold chain breaks” to ensure potency.
The rise of frozen food
While many of us today don’t think twice about grabbing an entrée from the grocery store freezer, this wasn’t always the case. Believed to be “cheap” or of poor quality decades ago, the frozen food sector became much more than ice cream and treats with the introduction of TV dinners, which were inexpensive and easy to heat and serve.
As households shifted from stay-at-home mothers to more women in the workplace, thus having less time to shop and cook, the frozen food market exploded. According to MarketsandMarkets, the value of the worldwide frozen food market in 2023 was $284.2 billion USD, and will grow to $363.7 billion USD in 2028, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 5.1 percent.
The reasons behind the increase include a significant reduction in food waste, the longer life span of frozen foods compared to fresh, the rise in e-commerce and the convenience of ordering frozen food online, and globalization in frozen food form. “Consumers can now enjoy a diverse culinary experience from the comfort of their homes, adding excitement and variety to their diets,” states MarketsandMarkets.
In her 2024 book, Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, author Nicola Twilley explains how economical, temperature-controlled, land-based transportation and refrigerated infrastructure led to a dramatic “snowballing” increase in how we buy and store food. “Frozen food shipped by truck tasted better and cost less, and Americans responded by buying it in ever-increasing quantities,” Twilley writes. This led to the widespread introduction and distribution of new products such as Minute Maid frozen orange juice concentrate in 1946, and fish sticks in 1953.
Inevitably, individual frozen products would eventually be combined. The first true all-in-one meal arrived in 1954, when Swanson Frozen Foods introduced its frozen TV dinners. According to company lore, Swanson salesman Gerry Thomas saw the company had 260 tons of unsold Thanksgiving turkey the previous year. In what amounted to a mind-boggling engineering design flaw, the turkey—in 10 refrigerated railroad cars—needed to be used quickly, since the refrigeration only functioned when the cars were in motion. Instead of wasting the product—and pointlessly driving railway cars across America—the company cooked the turkey and added mashed potatoes and peas in airline-style food trays that were then frozen. While some critics called these TV dinners an abomination, Swanson sold a staggering 10 million trays in 1954.
Refrigeration reigns supreme
More than 70 years after TV dinners forever changed our perception of frozen food, convenience meals are more popular than ever thanks to advances in refrigeration and refrigerated transportation, freezing, storage and food safety. Many dollar stores—which used to have just coolers for soda and juice—now have entire sections dedicated to frozen food for budget-minded consumers.
And the market size for packaged, refrigerated, and frozen meals continues to grow thanks to consumer demand and lifestyle changes. With little time to get home from work and prepare full sit-down meals before getting their kids to hockey or dance practice, many parents are choosing hassle-free frozen entrées and meals that come out of the microwave piping hot in just minutes, instead of hours. To appeal to a broader range of consumers, manufacturers have expanded their offerings well beyond frozen TV dinners to products that are gluten-free, vegetarian or vegan, keto, or suitable for Paleo diets.
Serving a diverse range of sectors, including food and beverage, pharmaceutical, healthcare and others, the business of transporting, storing, and distributing refrigerated and frozen products shows no signs of slowing down. As global populations grow, supply chains expand, and consumers demand fresher products year-round, the cold chain has become not just a convenience but a critical pillar of modern life. At the same time, the industry is evolving to meet new challenges, with operators investing in energy-efficient refrigeration systems, smart temperature-monitoring technologies, automation, and more sustainable warehouse design to reduce environmental impact while maintaining precision.
From the humble root cellar carved into a windswept Newfoundland hillside to ultra-low temperature freezers safeguarding life-saving vaccines, the story of cold storage is ultimately one of adaptation and innovation. And as technology advances and expectations rise, the business of keeping things cool is sure to remain anything but static.
