5. Commercial Food Service Water Filtration
Water Quality

3M™ Water Filtration Products for Foodservice Applications

  • Quality water filtration is better for business

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Water is fundamental to life – and also plays a huge role in the foodservice industry

  • Restaurants, cafés, quick service restaurants, coffee shops, convenient stores, and other foodservice outlets rely on fresh and clean water for daily business. Controlling water quality can be vital to your store’s brand identity and customer loyalty.

    You may consider incoming water to be fixed, stable and unchanging, but quality varies widely from region to region and even street to street. High levels of dissolved minerals, the use of disinfectants and the presence of tiny solid particles – or even residual bacteria – may result in unpleasant taste. And, untreated water may cause scaling on internal parts, corrosion on metal surfaces, and rot rubber components within your foodservice machinery.

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    3M™ Water Filtration Shutdown & Restart Guide

    Keep your business flowing when it’s open—and help protect your equipment when it’s not. Performing a proper shutdown of your 3M™ Water Filtration System is an essential practice to help preserve its functionality and help ensure expensive appliances are ready to go when you restart them back up.

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    School Water Filtration

    Help your school's water pass the lead test. Reduce up to 99% or more of the lead in your educational facility's drinking water, while reducing cysts, chlorine taste and odor, with 3M water filtration solutions.

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Key applications: where water filtration matters

3M™ Water Filtration Products are simple, effective and easy-to-install solutions for commercial foodservice applications. These systems are designed to meet the volume, water clarity and maintenance expectations of restaurant owners, fast food chain and convenience store operators, supermarkets, cafeterias and institutions.

For cold, brewed, ice and specialty beverages, or steamer, combi oven and other foodservice applications, there’s a 3M solution that’s ideal for you.

  • glass with ice cubes and water in it

    Ice Makers

    Ice is 100% water.  Great water makes great ice.

    Reduce scale build-up with 3M's ICE series. Help increase equipment life while reducing maintenance costs. Reduce bitter chlorine tastes and ice bin corrosion with the proper water filtration system.

  • Soda beverage dispenser

    Cold Beverage

    Excess sediment can clog your revenue streams.

    Help maintain consistent, quality, better tasting beverages by reducing chlorine taste and odor. Reduce particulate matter which can shorten the service life of expensive parts of beverage machines with 3M's BEV series.

  • Coffee and hot tea in cups on top of plate saucers

    Coffee/Hot Tea

    Bid farewell to bitter beverages.

    Help maintain coffee and tea clarity, consistency, and full flavor along with 3M's BREW series. Reduce particles in your water that can shorten the service life of your equipment.

  • Espresso machine

    Espresso

    Get chlorine under control.

    Reduce water hardness and chlorine, taste and odor from incoming water with 3M™ ScaleGard™ Pro and Blend Series. Our ion exchange systems will lessen bitter chlorine tastes while decreasing scale build-up to ensure you produce the best tasting product possible.

  • Broccoli in an oven tray in an oven being steamed

    Steam

    Keep your combi ovens running at full steam.

    Reduce poor water quality and equipment failure with 3M Water Filtration systems. Our reverse osmosis systems help lower maintenance costs while decreasing energy consumption by reducing scale build-up.

  • three cold beverage drinks in glasses with ice

    Multi-Equipment

    Fewer filters means less waste and space.

    3M's Dual Port and Dual Flow series systems are engineered to provide high flow rates, high capacities, and the benefits of water filtration for multiple foodservice equipment in a single compact package.

Other foodservice water filtration applications:

Why filtration matters for your business

Smoother coffee. Clearer ice cubes. Combi ovens running at full steam. When you work in food service, the quality of water you use is key to the right customer experience. Having quality filtration products may save time and money in the long run. Reducing impurities that may be in your water helps things taste and look better. Filtering water also helps reduce scale build-up, so your machines can run more efficiently with fewer service calls.

Quality, Taste and Consistency

One of the most noticeable problems – usually leading to customer complaints – is that untreated water may result in off-flavors. These may be caused by a number of contaminants that may be present in your water including dissolved minerals and sediment particles to disinfectants like chlorine or chloramine. Reducing such contaminants helps products taste better. For example:


  • Coffee has a richer, more subtle flavor and is not tainted with bitterness, odor, flatness – or, on occasion, surface scum
  • Cold beverages can be made using the recommended level of syrup as there is no need to use more to hide off-flavors and drinks have maximum fizz rather than being flat
  • Drinks from vending machines and water coolers taste better with no evidence of chlorine
  • Ice is not tainted with a ‘chlorine’ odor or sediment that makes cold drinks look and taste unpleasant
  • Food prepared or cooked with water tastes and looks better, with no flakes of hardwater scale present
Equipment Efficiency and Life

Even if customers have no complaints over sub-standard food and beverages, low quality water can damage machinery. One of the most damaging water quality issues is scale caused by dissolved minerals deposited onto machine surfaces. This may lead to more machine breakdowns, require more maintenance – and ultimately reduce machine lifetimes.


  • Scale on heating elements can reduce energy efficiency as it reduces heat transfer
  • ‘Hidden’ scale – which blocks pipes, valves and other internal components – reduces flow rates and can also cause internal leaks
  • Scale build-up can cut machine lifespan despite a lifetime of increased maintenance to keep it running
Business Impact

Unhappy customers and unreliable machinery can only lead in one direction: a negative effect on business. Here are just a few examples of how poor water quality can directly affect business:


  • Machines break down more frequently, or work sporadically – so may not be available when they should be generating income and lead to an overall higher cost of ownership
  • Brand reputation may become tarnished. Customers will either leave or complain if they are unsatisfied with beverage and even steamed food quality
  • Unreliable working conditions, regular disruption from service engineers and handling customer complaints may affect the morale of staff
  • Ultimately this all links back to an increase in running costs for the business and therefore reduced profits

Get help finding which 3M filter you may need

  • icon of hand and finger pointing upwards as to select something

    With a wide array of filter types available – and a variety of contaminants to reduce – it can be daunting to decide which filter is most appropriate. However, the choice can be narrowed by first considering key requirements such as:
     

    • Foodservice Application (example: coffee, ice, tea)
    • Machine Requirements (example: gal/day, lbs/day)
    • Local Water Quality (example: hardness, disinfectants)

    Explore our 3M foodservice water filter product selector tool to help you find a 3M filter for your foodservice application.*

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Water 101 Video Series

Check out our Water 101 video series to learn about water quality issues in each common foodservice application - ice, coffee, espresso, cold beverage, steam, and multi-equipment - and the filtration solutions you may need to help improve the quality of water feeding your important machinery.

Replacement filter information and FAQs

To help reduce food and beverage quality impacts, business interruptions, added cost, and ultimately reduced customer satisfaction, follow recommended guidelines on when to change your 3M water filter. Knowing more about what affects your local water quality will help you manage integrating water filtration into your business.

Why choose a 3M commercial foodservice water filter?

3M™ High Flow Series Products include the option of replacement filters featuring Integrated Membrane Pre-Activated Carbon Technology ("I.M.P.A.C.T.") that provides excellent cartridge life and economy. You’ll see some key benefits including:

    • Single-cartridge flow rates and capacities previously only available with three- or four-cartridge systems¹
    • Up to 12-month cartridge life
    • Fast and easy cartridge changes with our sanitary quick change design (SQC)
    • Direct or easily adaptable connections to existing plumbing lines
    • Certification to NSF Standard 53 for cyst reduction² (For select High Flow series products)
    • Reduction of 99.99 percent of waterborne bacteria³ (For select High Flow series products)

See how our HF90 model, part of the 3M™ High Flow Series, helps you achieve great, consistent taste and helps protect machinery.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Housing

Polypropylene housing

Pleated Membrane

Media with pleated membrane design¹ helps provide cyst² and bacteria³ protection, plus excellent sediment holding capabilities with minimal pressure drop

Carbon Block

Carbon block technology has more than four times the chlorine taste and odor-reduction capacity of the leading competitor’s pre-coat filter

Pleated Membrane

Pleated membrane media has six times the surface area of the leading competitor’s filter

Prefilter Wrap

Cartridges feature a five-micron prefilter wrap

3m blue trifecta

View our portfolio for foodservice applications

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Let the water knowledge flow.

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    Learn more about 3M Commercial Cleaning solutions

    An efficiently cleaned restaurant kitchen can help you save money and optimize business operations, while giving you more time to focus on creating a great dining experience for your customers.

  • ¹ Filters featuring the Integrated Membrane Pre-Activated Carbon Technology ("I.M.P.A.C.T.") media can clearly be identified by the icon on the product label
    ² Based on the use of Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts.
    ³ As demonstrated with 99.99% reduction of surrogate organism E. coli (ATCC 11229) and P. fluorescens (ATCC 49642) in manufacturer’s lab test.

    *Product Selection and Use: This tool is intended to provide guidance on products for a foodservice application. Since there are many factors that can affect a product’s use, the customer and user remain responsible for determining whether the 3M product is suitable and appropriate for the user’s specific application, including user evaluating the 3M product in user’s application.

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