3 Things to Consider when Choosing Restaurant Furniture
1. Focus on the Customer Experience when Choosing Restaurant Furniture
All businesses rely on customers to survive, so every choice should consider the customer: what they expect, enjoy, and want. When choosing restaurant furniture, start by thinking about your target customers and the environment that they expect. The first consideration is space: a good rule is to allocate 16-18 inches per person. The more elaborate the meals you serve, the more space each person will need.
Furniture will influence atmosphere. The styles you choose will determine your customers’ first impression. What do you want to convey to the customer, and how can furniture help? Colors, tones, and styles will all play a part in how your customer perceives your restaurant. Keep Color Theory in mind, but don’t forget that current trends can change the perception of certain colors.
Consider the accessibility and ease of interaction that your customers will experience with your furniture as well. Restaurants have specific guidelines under the Americans with Disability Act, but some of the guidelines are helpful for other demographics that you may be targeting, such as the elderly or people with small children. Consider what difficulties various customers might experience and how you can alleviate them. Heavy chairs might be difficult for children to move, but booths might be frustrating for the elderly to slide into. Incorporating a few different styles of tables and chairs may help accommodate a wider range of people.
2. Pick Commercial-Grade Furniture when Choosing Restaurant Furniture
If you haven’t shopped for restaurant furniture before, the prices vary widely. Restaurant furniture tends to be more expensive than home furniture because it is commercial-grade and meant to last for years in a high-impact, heavy traffic environment.
While a chair made for home use might be utilized a few times a day, restaurant furniture can see nearly constant use throughout each week.
Commercial-grade furniture undergoes weight and stress tests to ensure quality and durability. These tests help establishments avoid liability in lawsuits, and in some locations, compliance with rules and regulations.
3. Look for Easy-to-Clean Options when Choosing Restaurant Furniture
Family-friendly, boisterous restaurants are not the only restaurants that will see spills. No matter how formal the restaurant, accidents are still bound to happen. If your restaurant caters to children or family, then you are likely to see even more spills and let us face it, thrown food items.
You’ll want furniture that you will be able to wipe down efficiently. If cleaning is a too much of a hassle, you will be wasting your worker’s valuable time and energy.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, many customers want to see tables and even chairs being sanitized regularly between use. The majority of American’s say they will not go back to pre-pandemic cleaning habits and will likely expect to see restaurants maintaining these habits as well. It’s impossible to tell how far into the future these habits will last, but it may be worth investing in chairs with more simple designs – intricate designs can have a lot of crannies that will be difficult to systematically clean between visitors.
Conclusion
Overall, its important to remember that your furniture serves your customers’ needs when choosing restaurant furniture; every piece should be picked out with that in mind.
Equip is a direct supplier of commercial-grade furniture for restaurants, bars, shopping centers, airports, ski resorts and other high-traffic public spaces. Equip’s team can help you find attractive, functional furniture for any space and look at an affordable price point. All of Equip’s furniture is warrantied from 1-10 years depending on model and materials and made to last.