My ice machine decided to snow the entire line at Friday service

Last Friday at 7pm, the ice machine in the back started spitting out shaved ice like a snow cone truck, not cubes. Half the line was covered in a fine mist and the expo station looked like a winter wonderland. Turns out the auger bearing finally gave up after 6 years, so I had to borrow ice from the bar next door and hand-crack 40 pounds with a towel and a mallet. We still pushed through 120 covers, but my sous chef kept yelling 'snowball fight!' every time a new pile appeared. Anyone else had a machine fail mid-service and have to improvise with a less glamorous backup?

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terryrobinson21d ago

The health inspector angle is the real nightmare here, since that snow spray basically coated every surface in a fine layer of possible contamination. Might be worth checking your logs and doing a deep sanitize of the whole line before Monday, because that mist got into cracks you can't see. At least the hand-cracked ice gave you a solid excuse to tell the front of house why the drinks took an extra minute.