Restaurant furniture is one of the most important elements of any restaurant. You need to find attractive, long-lasting, sturdy furniture that suits your restaurant theme and doesn’t break the bank. Then you need to arrange the furniture in your establishment in a way that allows plenty of room for servers and customers to move around. Not only that but restaurant furniture needs to be constantly cleaned and maintained. So here are a few clever hacks to make buying, using, and maintaining restaurant furniture a little less stressful.
Use Reversible Table Tops
This fantastic invention is a tabletop with two different surfaces on either side. Surfaces that can be used as the top side of the table. You can get round or square laminated reversible table tops and attach them to table stands/legs. Then when you want to change your décor, or when one side of the tabletop is scratched or old you simply unscrew the tabletop, flip it over and reattach it to the table leg/stand. Your restaurant gets two looks for the price of one. This incredible restaurant furniture hack suits busy diners, cafes, and cafeterias and can easily be part of an elegant dinner party.
Add Benches Along the Wall
No matter what style you’ve chosen for your restaurant you might find that you need more seating. One of the best-known hacks is to run a continuous bench along the length of one wall. Then you simply place tables at intervals along the length of the bench and add chairs on the other side of the tables. The bench can suit your restaurant décor simply by matching the cushions, wood, or upholstery seating to the rest of the restaurant seating.
Secret Storage Space in Your Restaurant Booths
Did you know you can get booths that have hidden storage space? There are restaurant booths where the seat lifts up to reveal a space for storage. And also back-to-back booths (double booths) that can be pulled apart to store things between them. The customers will be none the wiser but you’ll have extra storage space. Booths take up quite a lot of space, so at least with hidden booth storage, you can get some use out of that space. If you can’t find ready-made booths with storage, you could always have them custom-built.
Don’t Over Tighten When Assembling Restaurant Furniture
If you’ve bought your restaurant furniture unassembled and you need to put it together yourself, it is a good idea not to over-tighten the hardware. This is one of the biggest mistakes made by restaurant owners. They think that the tighter they make the screws the stronger the joints and the longer the furniture will last. But the opposite is true. When you give that one extra rotation of the screwdriver, you run the risk of stripping the hardware and making it unusable. Although joints will eventually loosen over time, over-tightening them will not help.
Add a Crumb Strip to Your Restaurant Booths
If your restaurant has booths then here is an essential hack to make things easy for your servers and better for your customers. Add a “crumb strip” to the booths. A crumb strip is a narrow strip of space between the backrest and the seat cushions of the booth. The customer won’t feel the difference but leaving a strip of un-cushioned seating before the backrest allows for easy cleaning of the booths. Instead of your staff having to dig down into the crease where the seat meets the backrest, they can simply wipe along the crumb strip.
Poly Lumber Outdoor Restaurant Furniture
One of the tricks for keeping your outdoor seating area clean is to buy poly lumber outdoor furniture. This super durable material can be hosed down using a water pressure hose. Poly lumber is eco-friendly, and a great alternative to wood. It is non-porous and so it doesn’t absorb moisture from rain, dew, and condensation. You can easily wipe it down, wash it with a hose pipe, or even use a pressure-wash hose, and the furniture will not absorb moisture. Unlike plastic and wooden furniture, poly lumber patio furniture will not get mildew, or mold from being exposed to the elements. An easy hack to help with restaurant furniture maintenance.
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Add a Communal Table
If you tend to get groups of customers who want to be seated together, and if your staff spend their time pushing tables together and then separating them again, you should consider a communal table. You don’t have to make all the furniture in your restaurant communal, but having one long communal table can come in handy. You’ll be able to seat large groups, without having to sacrifice the smaller tables.
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