A row of freezer units at the Ramstein Air Base commissary in Germany sits mostly empty on Sept. 28, 2026. (Jennifer H. Svan/Stars and Stripes)

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — Shoppers at four U.S. military commissaries in Europe encountered partially empty refrigeration units this week as repair work progressed on malfunctioning cooling systems.

The Defense Commissary Agency confirmed that refrigeration units at the Ramstein Air Base store in Germany, along with locations in Kaiserslautern, Bavaria and Lakenheath, England, were undergoing maintenance due to equipment failures. Agency spokesman Jefferson Wolfe stated that the issues stemmed from routine wear on high‑use equipment and delays in receiving specialized replacement parts, not from a coordinated outage.

Signs posted at the Ramstein facility indicated temporary unavailability of certain freezers and directed customers to relocated products within mobile chillers. Wolfe noted that repair crews aimed to restore full operation by mid‑October, with staff stationed on the floor to assist shoppers in locating items.

Two additional European commissaries — Vogelweh near Kaiserslautern and Grafenwoehr in Bavaria — were also experiencing partial refrigeration repairs, though each incident was isolated and unrelated to the others. Wolfe emphasized that the failures were not linked across sites and resulted from manufacturer‑specific part shortages.

DECA, which operates 235 stores worldwide, had recently awarded contracts to modernize refrigeration in 16 European locations. Maintenance teams were performing scheduled upgrades alongside routine repairs to improve long‑term reliability, according to Wolfe.

Earlier in September, several U.S. domestic commissaries reported similar refrigeration problems, with at least six stores posting notices about inability to sell meat, dairy, produce or frozen foods. Some facilities experienced defrost cycles that spoiled thousands of dollars of inventory. The Army Criminal Investigation Division’s Cyber Field Office and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations confirmed ongoing investigations into those incidents, though no details about the nature of the probes were released.

No timeline for completing repairs at the European sites was provided beyond the mid‑October target, and no further updates on the investigations had been announced.