Before rushing into buying furniture for your restaurant or hotel, there are a couple of questions you should ask yourself because wrong choices in furniture can be very costly.
If you don’t have a consultant on hand to help you, this can also be quite tricky since you want to make sure that the selections look good together but also work with your operational requirements. At the end of the day, contract furniture is an investment in a business and you will want to have a good return on it. Here are some tips to help you in the process!
We will write detailed guides for each aspect but we hope this gives you a good summary and inspiration.
- Style
- Choose the right style that fits your restaurant. A beautiful design does not necessarily mean that the products have to be complex. Sometimes simple products in a unique finish do the job. If you don’t feel confident enough to mix and match different chair designs, you could just mix and match different fabrics. Please don’t choose unique designs over comfort. There should be a clear balance between these two aspects.
- Layout, quantities and sizes
- Planning the layout of a restaurant is not easy and sometimes quite difficult. Calculating correct quantities, good floor layouts and correct sizes for tables and chairs is extremely important. The chair width also needs to go with the table width depending on how many people you want to sit on each end.
- Indoor or Outdoor
- Are you planning on putting your furniture outside? If yes, it is important to take the material of the furniture into consideration. You definitely don’t want your restaurant furniture to bespoiled after a couple of months due to the weathering effects. Therefore, you should buy furniture that is classified for outdoor use and avoid any wood that has not been treated as well as any metal that is not powder coated and sealed. If you decide to buy outdoor furniture, you should also think about storage in case you would like to lock it away during winter in Europe or extremely hot summers in the UAE. If you want to store them, it is a good idea to order furniture that is stackable.
- Maintenance
- This is key to getting shelf life out of your products. All your products should be maintained regularly and inspected for damages. This could mean oiling woods, remove stains that could affect the material and fix anything that loosens up immediately. It will tremendously increase the life span of your products and hence the return of the investment you made. If you use wooden outdoor products, it should be clear that they are more maintenance intense than for example metal or plastic products. So if you want to keep the maintenance to a minimum, choose the material accordingly.
- Warranty
- Always, always and always buy furniture with a commercial warranty. The last thing you want to worry about is if you are covered in case any problems with your furniture arise. Remember, this is contract furniture and used more extensively than the furniture you use at home. Also your guests might not treat it as carefully as you would.
- Delivery Dates
- Have realistic expectations about delivery dates of your furniture. Generally, it is advisable to order furniture 6 to 8 weeks prior to delivery. This allows the manufacturer to produce the contract furniture for your restaurant, bar, hotel or café in time and saves you a lot of stress closer to the date. If your delivery date is being pushed back, inform the company you ordered from and ask them if they can store it in their warehouse before sending it to you. That way you don’t have to worry about finding additional storage space.
Hope these tips are coming in handy!
