The Fryer That Went Down on a Friday
A fry warmer at Cornelia stops heating at 11:45 on a Friday. The service call goes to the tech on duty. He arrives, opens the unit, and asks: what thermocouple is in this thing? The manager calls the main shop. Nobody in the shop can immediately locate the original receipt, the unit model number is partially worn off the data plate on the back, and the previous service record is in the other manager's email from eight months ago.
The tech drives to the nearest supply house and takes a best guess based on visual inspection. It is the wrong part. He comes back Monday.
This is a multi-location equipment failure that costs two days of degraded service, one wasted parts run, and one unnecessary labour charge — all because the thermocouple specification for that specific fryer at that specific location was not recorded in a place the technician could access in the parking lot on a Friday.
The Component Fields That Answer the Service Call Before It Starts
The thermocouple, pilot, ignitor, gas valve, and belts fields are the five part-number capture points for gas and mechanical units. These are not the manufacturer's stock descriptions — they are the specific part numbers that fit the specific serial number of the specific unit installed at a specific location. A Cornelia freezer/cooler and a Baldwin freezer/cooler from the same manufacturer may use different gasket profiles if they are different production years or purchased in different spec configurations.
The Gasket # field is the one that gets skipped at intake and causes a three-day lead time later. A door gasket on a reach-in cooler is a size-specific part. An Ice maker in Blue Ridge running a different cubic-foot capacity than the one in the Shop will take a different door frame heater as well. Both are recorded here: Gasket # captures the profile and nominal size, Door Frame Heater captures the wattage and configuration.
The Serial field is the tie-breaker when two identical-model units are installed at the same location. Model number alone is not sufficient for warranty claims, and it is not sufficient for identifying the correct firmware if the unit has updateable controllers. The serial number is what the manufacturer's technical support team asks for in the first 30 seconds of a support call.
Location as the First Filter
The Location field covers Baldwin, Cornelia, Clarksville, Wilbanks, Blue Ridge, Shop, and Papa's Pizza BR. This is not just administrative organisation — it is the primary filter for maintenance dispatch. When the regional manager is doing a quarterly equipment review, filtering by Location: Clarksville shows every unit at that site: its model, serial, last service record, manual link, and any open notes. The review takes ten minutes instead of a cross-referencing exercise across invoice history.
The Manual field carries a direct URL to the manufacturer's PDF documentation. A Blizzard machine has a different procedure for compressor belt tension than a griddle has for ignitor replacement. The link in the record means the technician can pull up the service manual on the way to the call, not after arriving and discovering they do not have the right documentation.
The Merchant ID and Terminal ID fields handle the POS hardware. A credit card terminal that goes offline at a location needs its terminal ID to initiate a support ticket with the processor. If that number is not readily available, the location manager is on hold with the payment processor reading off digits from the back of the unit at the counter while the lunch queue builds.
Two photo slots per unit — front panel and data plate — give the technician visual confirmation before they leave the supply house.