Refrigerated display cabinets are widely used to keep chilled/frozen food products in retail food stores. Storage temperatures must be efficiently controlled to ensure that the product temperature is maintained under the recommended value. As a part of the food cold chain, numerous surveys show that refrigerated display cabinets seem to be a weak link apart from household practices. A great deal of effort has been performed in order to investigate and improve the performance of the cabinets in terms of both temperature homogeneity and energy efficiency. In this review article, the investigation on refrigerated display cabinet performance, from basic experimental field and laboratory studies to advanced numerical simulation, are presented. The field investigation allows the knowledge of real use conditions and the identification of problems during food storage, however, it is usually high cost and time-consuming. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach becomes promising alternative to study the influence of different design parameters and operating conditions on the cabinet performance. This review provides the background, problematic, state of the art and future trends related to this type of refrigeration equipment.