Restaurant Furniture Blog

Nobody likes to go out to eat and get stuck to close next to someone else that is eating. Especially if they are paying a good deal of money to eat out at your restaurant establishment. If you have rows of tables you need to be careful of people bumping into each other when they both decide to stand up in their chair at the same time.

Setting up your tables so that they are in 45 degree angles from corner to corner you avoid having any issues of patrons bumping into each other when they stand up. You can also maximize your restaurant space entirely. When the tables are set up back to back the distance between the chairs has to be substantial. This way you solve your problem and you increase the amount of tables in your restaurant leading to being able to seat more customers at the same time, which is always a plus.

This will also give the illusion that your restaurant is much busier than it really might be causing people to want to come and eat when ultimately nothing different has changed. The way you set up your restaurant tables is very important. You always want to be running at your most optimal rate in order to be 100% efficient with your restaurant layout.

Have you gave any thought about what you are doing with your outdoor space? Spring is around the corner and before you know your patrons will want to sit outside an eat their lunches and dinners. Now is the time to take your outdoor furniture and give it an examination. Is it in good condition? Does it need painting?

People enjoy eating outdoors and now is the time to take a look and see if you need new furniture or if you need to really clean up your existing furniture. When people eat outdoors they tend to really look at their surroundings even more than they do when they eat indoors. if your furniture is rugged and beat up your customers will see it immediately. If you have been holding for many years now might be the time to spruce it up outside. have the pavement professionally pressure washed, paint the exterior of your restaurant. Nobody wants to sit and eat and watch the paint peel of the side of your building.

Come visit http://www.seatingexpert.com and take a look at some of the sales that are happening right now. You might just find something you like.

Owning any business comes with many different challenges in today’s market place. The restaurant industry is not immune and with winter here now many restaurants tend to slow down a bit, especially in states that feel the harsh winters over the cool summer months. During this time some restaurants either close down for Spring or slow things down quite a bit. Now is a good time to start preparing for spring fever. No matter how much you look at it spring time brings people out of the house and wanting to get out and about. Now might be a good time to think about some new layouts for your restaurant to keep things fresh and exciting.

Have you had the same restaurant layout for quite sometime now? With the season getting close to shifting over now might be the right time to give your restaurant layout a face lift. Start by removing all your furniture or sliding it off to one side and taking a picture of the space. This will help you visualize new possible changes that might happen. Try to come up with some sketches on how you can change things around to give the energy of your restaurant a new flow. It is good to change things from time to time. Now might also be a good time to give the walls a new fresh coat of paint for spring time.

Your furniture layout does not have to be the same forever. Changing things gets people talking which is what you want. Change of flow and energy is always a good thing especially for a new fresh up and coming spring season. Maybe start thinking about some new outside signage along with your new furniture layout that you will be conducting.

When it comes to restaurant furniture and chairs you want to make a purchase for something that is sturdy yet comfortable. It can often times be very difficult to find a chair that has both qualities. Usually a chair that is wood and metal will be able to fill that void for you.

Chairs with metal legs and wood backs are ideally the set up you want for a restaurant that sees a great deal of traffic. Over time those chairs will see a lot of abuse along with natural wear and tear so if you are not careful with the chair you pick you could find yourself replacing chairs and you don’t want that to happen. There are a few different types of wooden tops you can have for people to sit on. They can sit on wooden tops or even vinyl and fabric covered chairs. Remember that the fabric ones will require professional cleaning and maybe steaming. The wooden chairs will most likely only require a wipe down after every single days use. It all depends on how busy your business really is and how much it matters.

Remember that you can very easily find a restaurant chair that looks good and is also esthetically pleasing to the eye. You don’t need to sacrifice appearance for quality.

When you think of restaurant booths you don’t exactly think of the words classy and stylish right off but you very well could for the right restaurant. Restaurant booths have many different options beyond what you might see at your local burger restaurant. Upscale restaurants require a much more elegant type of booth for its customers to sit in. Not all high end clientele wants to sit at a table.

Booths are not just for your local hamburger joint or corner diner. They are used at many different locations. Most people rather sit in a booth than a table simply for its comfort level and value. High end restaurants all over have realized the need and the demand for elegant booths which has increased dramatically during recent times. Restaurant booth design has really had an explosive growth and will most likely continue its growth into the very near future. As long as people keep going out to eat and continue to have a strong need to be comfortable restaurant booth design will continue to evolve and morph into providing not only regular style average booths but also classy, elegant and stylish booths for those more upscale eating establishments.

If you would like to learn more about a variety of restaurant booth design options that we currently have please visit our booth section and please take a look at some of our options.

Bar furniture, of course, not always confined to bars - or at least, bars as we traditionally know them. Mention the word ‘bar’ and most people think of alcohol. Yet bars can be found in many other areas. Sushi ‘bars’ were once popular. Diners still sat on bar stools and helped themselves to the various types of sushi on offer. Milk shake or soda bars were once popular and these days, in many homes, we have breakfast bars.

So a bar is not just for serving alcohol. Many restaurants now include an eating area that is nothing more than a bar. This has proven to be popular with singles and those in a hurry. For singles, of course, they are dining with others, even if it is at a bar. Bar furniture then can be used in a wide variety of situations.

The pictured bar stool is of European design although its influence is obviously not from Europe - at least, with a name like the Aztec stool, you would think not. Made out of solid European beechwood, this bar stool is made for commercial use so it has the strength that comes with European furniture. This stool has a walnut finish and can be assembled with or without a padded seat. The footrest is available in brass, silver or black.

Eating at bars has been popular in some areas, particularly with lunch crowds in some of our larger cities. Bar furniture is no longer that staid swivel stool that adorned bars many years ago. Bar furniture now comes in a wide range of designs, some with backs, some without; some with padded seats, some without; and some that are fixed while others are swivel. Finding bar furniture is only difficult now because there is such a range to choose from. Be sure to check the customizations that are available for each piece as well.

We highlight a lot of different restaurant furniture on these pages. We include a broad range of furniture including bar furniture, restaurant tables and chairs, outdoor restaurant furniture and booths. If you are wondering how to obtain a quote on any of these items, follow these easy steps.

• If the item you want is featured on this blog, click on the picture and it will take you directly to that item’s place in the catalog.
• If the item is not featured here, visit our site, www.seatingexpert.com, and click on the relevant category.
• Once you have found the item you wish to obtain a quote on, fill in all the required details. Most items have customization options. Be sure to select the right options for your requirements.
• Enter the quantity you require (note most items have a minimum order quantity).
• Click the add to quote button and continue browsing the catalog until you have completed your requirements.
• Click on the “View Quote” option located on the upper right of the screen.
• Click on the “Request Quote” option located on the bottom left of the list of items.

Your list of items is then sent to us where we carefully put together a competitive quote for you to review. If the quote falls within your budget and you wish to proceed with placing an order - just follow the instructions in the emailed quote. It’s all straight forward and so is the process of ordering your restaurant furniture.

Booths have been around for hundreds of years and the shape of a restaurant booths layout very much depended on the shape of the restaurant. Mind you, I don’t know if they called them restaurants 200-300 years ago. They still had booths, though.

If we talk about tradition, some go back to the sixties when booths were popular in roadhouses and the popular burger joints that teens hung out in. Even then, the layout much depended on the shape of the burger joint. You often had booths along a solid wall, low booths along windows, and bar stools at the counter.

Has anything changed? Country towns still have the traditional burger house. They don’t all have booths these days. Fast food chains often have a series of plastic booths, hard on the tail bone but easy to keep clean. Mid-range restaurants are taking to booths, especially with the range of modern designs and fabrics.

There is another reason why tradition plays such a small roll in a restaurant booths layout - and that is the generation gap. Those who enjoy sitting in booths to eat are generally under 30. They weren’t around when booths reached their height of popularity at the end of the 60’s. To this generation, there is no tradition. They either like what they see and feel comfortable, or they don’t. And typical of most people today - they simply vote with their feet.

Using lightweight table bases can certainly add a little flexibility to your restaurant tables layout. The heavier you make your tables, the harder they become to quickly move around, especially for one person. If you need more than one person to move tables, you are using valuable resources that could be better deployed elsewhere, like moving other tables.

Pictured is a resin pedestal base that weighs in at only 13lbs. That is certainly lightweight when you consider cast iron bases can weigh more than 30lbs on their own. You then have to add the table top weight - and some of them can be quite hefty too. Keeping that combined weight down is what makes a table flexible enough to be moved at will.

Resin can be a good choice if you need the flexibility of having tables either indoors or outdoors. Resin is easy to keep clean, is scratch and chip resistant and is tolerant of most weather conditions. It also looks good being available in eight different colors (metal green shown).

Today’s modern restaurant needs to be flexible in its restaurant tables layout. If you have a large group arrive that wants to dine together, you need to be able to move two or more tables together quickly. Having lightweight restaurant tables makes the task easy - even for one person, and means the tables can put together (and moved apart) quickly with little disturbance to other diners.

I don’t have to remind most people that we are in the middle of winter right now and it’s pretty darn cold. No one likes to eat while feeling cold so does your restaurant furniture layout take advantage of the warm spots in your restaurant? Or does it, like some restaurants I have been to recently, place diners in the path of cooling breezes (cooling in summer, chilling in winter)?

If I can get one message across to restaurant owners, it is this: look at your restaurant furniture layout from a diner’s perspective, not your own. You can stand in the kitchen and look across the dining room and feel everything looks great. Go and sit in all the chairs - then tell me if everything is great. What can you see; what can you hear; and what can you feel? All three are important questions and you need to address them.

Diners are affected by temperature. If they are too hot or too cold they will not return. Diners want to come and enjoy a meal and, generally speaking, the company of another person. They don’t want to be chilled nor do they want to be roasted.

Diners want to hear each other. Diners that cannot hear each other because of kitchen or air conditioning noise will also stay away. They want to be able to talk to each other without having to shout.

Diners want to feel comfortable. They don’t want to feel cold drafts nor do they want to feel others brushing past them to get to or from their tables.

Viewing your restaurant furniture layout from a diner’s perspective means you are putting their interests first - and so you should. They are, after all, the customers; the people paying the bills; and the people that are keeping your business in business.