Ice Chest -- has anyone ever tried this?

I use to work at a restaurant with a salad bar. I had to set up the salad bar every morning. This was back when the trend was to place kale leaves around every container in the bar. First I set the containers where I wanted them, then packed ice around each container, then salted the ice and covered with kale. The ice didn't melt and you could take the containers out to refill them and the ice stayed put. All this to say, shake salt on your ice and it takes a lot longer to melt. I just used table salt.