The seven stages and what each one really costs
A commercial order from Foshan to a northern European port runs 96 to 108 days from signed drawing to installed furniture. The breakdown we work to is: shop drawings and sample approval, 8 to 14 days; material release and lumber preparation, 3 to 45 days depending on species stock; production, 30 to 40 days; finishing and cure, 9 to 12 days; inspection and packing, 2 to 3 days; booking, loading and documentation, 5 to 10 days; sea freight and clearance, 34 to 42 days.
Only two of those stages are inside the factory walls. That is the single most useful fact about lead times: a buyer who spends three weeks choosing a fabric between quotation and deposit has added three weeks to delivery just as surely as a factory that runs late. The clock is shared, and the honest way to plan is to put every stage on one sheet with an owner named against it.
Day counts are per stage and they do not simply add up, because three pairs of stages overlap. Drawings for the fixed seating can be approved while loose chairs are already in production, since they use different lines. Lumber for one species can be drying while another species is being machined. And inspection can begin on the first packed cartons while the last tables are still in the paint shop. On a well run order, 6 to 9 days are recovered this way, which is why a schedule built by adding every stage in sequence overstates the total by about a week.
Days 0 to 12: drawings, samples and the approval that stalls
A shop drawing for a fixed banquette takes 3 working days and carries 11 dimensions that matter: overall length, depth at the seat, depth at the base, seat height, back height, back rake, seat overhang, plinth height, plinth setback, upholstery split line, and the position of any service access hatch. If any one is missing, production stops at the machining centre rather than at the drawing board, which is the expensive place to stop.
The 1:1 sample is the second gate. A chair frame sample takes 7 days including the first upholstery pull, and a booth end panel takes 5. Buyers sometimes skip the sample to save a week and lose three later, because a frame that measures correctly but sits 15 mm low at the front rail is not discoverable in a PDF. Our rule is that any item over 40 units gets a physical sample, and anything under 40 can be approved from a drawing plus photographs of a previous identical build.
Approval is where the schedule most often dies by inches. A drawing sent to a restaurant owner, an interior designer, a kitchen consultant and a landlord can take 3 days or 3 weeks to come back, and every one of those days is a day the factory cannot buy lumber for the job. Some of our clients now set a 48 hour approval window in their own contracts, with silence counting as approved for non-structural dimensions. It sounds bureaucratic and it recovers an average of 9 days.
The full field list for a production ready drawing, including the five dimensions most often left off, is set out in our notes on restaurant furniture specification. Sending a complete drawing pack at enquiry stage is the cheapest schedule acceleration available, because it removes the whole revision loop rather than shortening it.
Days 12 to 50: production, and why lumber is the hidden clock
Once material is released, a chair takes 26 to 31 working days end to end. Cutting is 3 days for a 300 piece run. Machining, which is where tenons, mortises and the seat rail profiles are cut, is 6 days. Frame assembly and glue cure is 4 days, because a clamped frame needs 24 hours at 20 degrees before it can be handled and 48 before sanding. Sanding is 3 days. Upholstery is the variable: 90 chairs at 3.2 per operator day on two seats is 14 days, and a tufted or channel stitched back can double that. On the solid oak dining chair with fabric seat we run 3.4 per operator day because the cover is top stitched rather than piped, and that single change is worth 3 days on a 90 chair order.
Lumber is the part buyers underestimate. A kiln charge of 8 to 10 percent moisture content rubberwood takes 12 to 18 days of drying plus 5 days of equalising, and if the mill does not hold the species in stock the clock starts at felling, not at order. Ash and white oak in 40 mm thickness are usually held; walnut in 65 mm is often not. A walnut order placed in June for September delivery is a schedule risk that has nothing to do with the factory being slow.
The numbers scale in a way that is easy to check. A 40 cover restaurant typically needs 20 to 24 tables and 70 to 80 chairs, and a mixed order of that size occupies one 40HQ at 74 to 82 percent volume utilisation. On that volume, our line runs 85 to 95 chairs a week and 25 table tops a week, so a straight chairs and tables order is 4 to 5 weeks of production, not 8. If your quote says 60 days for 80 chairs and 24 tables, ask what the extra 3 weeks are for: the answer is usually batching with other orders, which is a legitimate commercial answer but should be priced knowingly.
Mixed orders behave differently from single category orders, and this is where the restaurant table and chair sets buying pattern helps. A set order that combines tables, chairs and booth modules in one model number is scheduled as one production block, which removes the inter-stage waiting that separate purchase orders create. A single JP-S017 table and chair set released as 24 units is a 5 week block from material release to packed carton, and because the table and chairs share a finish, they cure together and ship together.
Days 50 to 62: the finish cure nobody budgets
Finishing is quick. Curing is not, and the two get confused in quotations. A three coat catalysed polyurethane finish is 2 days of spraying with 8 hours of flash off between coats, and then 7 days at 20 to 25 degrees before the surface reaches handling hardness. Pack it on day 3 and the wrap film prints the surface, especially on a satin sheen where the marks show at a low angle in daylight and are impossible to polish out on site.
Powder coating is faster and more predictable: 200 degrees for 20 minutes in the oven, then 40 minutes of cooling before handling, so a metal frame order can be packed the next day. This is why metal chairs quote 3 to 6 days shorter than timber chairs, and why a mixed timber and metal order should not be planned by averaging the two.
Humidity moves the cure by 2 to 4 days. Above 85 percent relative humidity in a Foshan summer, a polyurethane coat that would tack in 8 hours takes 14, and a factory that does not have a controlled drying room will either wait or pack soft. We plan 9 to 12 days for the finishing stage on any timber order between May and September, and 7 to 9 days between November and March. Buyers who insist on a 5 day finishing stage in July are buying print marks.
There is one shortcut that is legitimate: order a finish that is cured by time rather than by chemistry, meaning a water based system with a forced air drying tunnel. It cures in 24 hours and it is 20 to 30 percent more expensive per square metre. On a 300 chair order that premium is roughly the cost of one extra week of site delay, so it pays for itself when the schedule is genuinely tight.
Days 62 to 72: inspection, packing and the booking window
Inspection is 1 day of work and 2 days of paperwork if it is done properly. AQL 2.5 on a 300 piece order means a sample of 50 pieces, and the checks that catch real problems are not cosmetic: seat height within 2 mm, frame squareness within 3 mm across the diagonal, a 150 kg static load held for 60 seconds on the seat and 40 kg on the back, and a moisture reading of 8 to 10 percent on five components per bundle. A supplier who reports only visual defects is not inspecting, they are looking.
Packing is where the shipping damage is designed out, and it takes 2 to 3 days for a 40HQ. Cartons at 5 ply and 1,200 grams, table tops crated flat with 3 mm foam interleaves, corner boards on every vertical edge, and strapping at 400 mm from each end. On a mixed load of booths and loose furniture the packing plan has to be agreed before production because it changes how the booth modules are built: a back that ships in one piece needs a crate that costs 3 times the carton.
The booking window is the stage buyers most often forget, and it is the one that converts a factory delay into a commercial one. Space for a 40HQ from Shenzhen or Nansha should be booked 10 to 14 days before the loading date, and in the August to October peak plus the four weeks before Chinese New Year, 3 to 4 weeks is normal. Freight rates in those windows can move 30 to 50 percent week on week, so a booking made late does not just cost time, it costs a number nobody budgeted.
One practical check on any supplier: ask for the inspection report of the last container they shipped, with photographs. Our own process and the standards behind those numbers are described under restaurant furniture quality control, and a factory that cannot produce that document on request is a factory whose lead times are aspirational.
Days 72 to 108: water, port and the paperwork
Sea freight from South China to Rotterdam is 30 to 35 days, to Los Angeles 16 to 20, to Jebel Ali 22 to 26. Those are port to port and exclude the 3 to 5 days on each end for trucking and terminal handling. Add 5 to 8 days for customs clearance and inland delivery in Europe, and the total after the container leaves the factory is 38 to 48 days. There is no way to compress this except by paying for it, and the air freight alternative on furniture is 8 to 12 times the sea cost per cubic metre, which only makes sense for spare parts.
Documentation errors add days at the destination and they are always avoidable. The commercial invoice must match the packing list line for line, the HS codes must match what the goods actually are, and any fumigation certificate for solid wood packing must be issued before loading rather than after arrival. A mismatch on 3 lines out of 40 holds a container for 4 to 6 days in a European port, at 90 to 140 euros a day of demurrage plus the site cost of a crew standing idle.
Insurance and claims deserve a line in the schedule too. Photograph the load row by row as it goes in, and photograph the seal. If cartons arrive crushed, the claim is decided by those photographs, and a claim filed without them typically settles at 40 to 60 percent of the replacement cost. That is a schedule problem as much as a money problem, because the replacement parts are another 6 weeks away.
The five delays that actually happen
Across the last 200 projects we shipped, late delivery split into five causes. Drawing or sample approval taking longer than 10 days accounted for 34 percent of late orders. Lumber or veneer not in stock for the specified species accounted for 21 percent. Buyer supplied fabric arriving late or failing the Martindale test on arrival accounted for 18 percent. Peak season booking pressure accounted for 14 percent. The remaining 13 percent were site delays, where the furniture was ready and the restaurant was not.
Only one of those five is a factory performance issue. That is worth sitting with before a penalty clause is drafted, because a liquidated damages clause aimed at the factory will not touch the other 87 percent of the risk, and it will be priced into the quote by any supplier who has been burned by it before.
The cure is sequencing rather than pressure. Release the loose furniture first, because it is the fastest to build and the easiest to store. Hold the fixed seating until the site has a confirmed floor level, because a banquette built to a floor that later gains 20 mm of screed is a banquette that has to be re-made. Phase the deliverable so that the first container arrives 3 weeks before you need to install, not 3 days.
If you are working to an opening date, the useful conversation is not about days of production but about which stage owns the next decision. We publish our current production slot availability to clients at enquiry stage, and the sequence we recommend for a 90 cover fit-out is documented under restaurant furniture projects. To put your own dates against a real slot, request a restaurant furniture quote with the drawing pack, the quantities and the opening date, and the reply will show the stage dates rather than a single number.
Building a buffer that tells the truth
Add 15 percent to whatever total you are quoted, and treat that buffer as belonging to the site rather than to the factory. On a 100 day schedule that is 15 days, which absorbs a slow approval loop and a re-booked sailing without touching the installation window. A buffer under 10 percent is not a buffer, it is a hope.
Then watch two numbers weekly. The first is the number of days since material release, because that is the only stage the factory fully controls and a slip there is real. The second is the number of days to the booked sailing, because that is the only stage that cannot be recovered by working faster. When those two numbers start to converge, the schedule is in trouble and it is still fixable; when they have crossed, it is not.
Finally, buy the spare parts with the order. Ten percent extra glides, 3 percent extra seat foams and 2 percent extra fabric on the original dye lot costs about 1.5 percent of the order value and eliminates the 6 week wait that a single torn seat would otherwise create in month eight. Lead time planning is mostly the art of removing the second order.