Restaurant Furniture Blog

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.