Restaurant Furniture

01  Round tables or rectangles — start from party size

A room built for two-covers turns over faster; a room built for six-covers sells more per head. Count your expected mix of two, four and six before you choose table shapes, then decide how many tables can be pushed together without blocking the next seat. Getting this wrong is the single most expensive layout mistake in a restaurant, because it cannot be fixed by buying different chairs.

02  Seat height, table height and knee clearance as one number set

A restaurant table is normally 750 mm high and a dining chair 450–460 mm at the seat. Bar tables are 1050 mm with a 750 mm stool. These three numbers have to be fixed together. Change one on its own and the guest either sits with their knees against the apron or eats with their elbows raised. Ask for the seat height and table height on the same drawing, not from two suppliers.

03  Allow for the chair you have not chosen yet

Table dimensions are usually checked side-to-side, not with a chair in front of them. An armchair adds 80–100 mm of width per side compared with a side chair, and every chair needs 450–500 mm of pull-out space behind it. Draw the tables with the chairs pulled out, in the occupied position, and count the seats that way.

04  Upholstery is a cleaning decision before it is a design decision

Decide the cleaning routine first: wiped daily, steam-cleaned weekly, or vacuumed only. Daily wiping suits PU or microfibre. Weekly steam suits a removable cover in a tight weave. A fixed fabric cover in a room that gets sanitised nightly will fail at the seams before the foam does — and that failure shows up in year two, not year one.

05  Plan the aisle before you plan the seat count

Map the route from the entrance and the service stations with chairs pulled out and guests seated. A dining room that counts 96 seats on the plan is often an 80-seat room in service, because two of the aisles are too narrow for a server carrying a tray. Compare the furniture count against the clearance your operation actually needs, not against a rule of thumb.

06  Specify what has to be confirmed on the drawing

Dimensions with tolerances, fabric batch colour variation, timber colour variation between batches, hardware finish and packing method all belong on the approved drawing. 'Same as the sample' is not a specification. Anything not written down is the thing that gets argued about at inspection, and inspection is two days before the container is loaded.