The viral coolers. Picture: The Bubbly Circle X
WHEN you have prepped the most thirst-quenching cocktails in a flask, a polystyrene or plastic cooler can honestly be a huge insult to your cooler-carrying needs.
Fortunately, brands are innovating to give us quality items for our quality drinks and foods. But these do not come cheap.
The best coolers will keep your food and drinks cold for hours, whether you are entertaining friends in the backyard, spending a day by the water in your beach chair, or enjoying the great outdoors with your favourite camping gear in tow.
Some coolers hold ice or ice packs to cool food and beverages down, some provide insulation to help retain the temperature of chilled items, and some do both.
They come in an assortment of styles, including hard coolers and soft coolers, with both small and large capacities.
Recently, the talk of the town on social media is the Fieldbar cooler. Mzansi party-goers cannot get enough of this local and luxurious cooler box.
Fieldbar 🙃 https://t.co/H6TOEghWrn
— Lorato ❤️ (@lora2boutlwanye) November 15, 2023
Taking to X, one user asked: “That Fieldbar cooler box is how many liters?? Also, do I have to put ice or is its temperature normally cold?”
Another user wrote: “My Fieldbar deserves a picnic basket sibling.”
A third wrote: “Big ups to Fieldbar marketing! Everyone wants that stuff.”
A fourth commented: “I know I’ve been hating on the Fieldbar cooler box but I succumbed to the peer pressure and bought one. They delivered it and it’s so beautiful, okes.”
Costing between R2,100 and R2,200, the cooler boxes labelled as “drinks boxes” on the company website are made in St Michaels Park in Observatory, Cape Town.
With its elegant design and modern insulation technology, the company has redefined the traditional cooler box.
Founded in 2018 by Lee Hartman and Corban Warrington, the team said: “We want to revive the belief system that our grandparents and the generations before them had, which is to buy something of quality and longevity and then repair and care for that item.
“This return to quality is, we believe, the foundation of sustainable design. And it’s why all parts of our products are repairable and replaceable. Because you make something different when you know it has to last forever.”
Besides the “drinks boxes”, the company also sells “gin trunks” that cost between R3,800 and R4,000, and people love them.
When it comes to capacity, which many people questioned, the “gin trunk” is about 2.5 times the size of the “drinks box” and it is a 24-litre hardcase cooler box that accommodates a broad range of drinks configurations, keeping the party going for that much longer.
Besides the Fieldbar cooler, other luxurious coolers in the market include the FOM Venture Cooler which is specially designed with a refrigeration airlock structure that enables maximum cooling power for up to 72 hours, the PolarBox Retro Cooler Box, which features an attractive vintage design that keeps your drinks and meals cold with style, and the Rogue Ice Cooler, with a canvas seat and designed specifically to fit into the back of game vehicles, good for day trips, or longer.