Picking out tables for your restaurant can be a very pleasant way to spend your day, although the significance of this decision might give you pause. A restaurant needs to have an optimal furniture setup because a failure to fulfill this need has resulted in numerous good quality eateries shutting down before they got a chance to build some momentum. If you don’t want to go down this pernicious route, it might be best if you didn’t take this decision so frivolously. A specific aspect of furniture selection for new and upcoming restaurant entrepreneurs that we would like to help you out with is that of picking an appropriate table top.
Your furniture can be made of all kinds of materials, but it’s not necessary that this same material will be used to construct the top of each table. Tables made out of wood often have tops that use a vastly different substance, and we are going to give you a run through of a few tabletop variants that might be suitable for what you’re trying to accomplish. Any commercial furniture acquisition that you take part in needs to be precise and surgical, so there is definitely a lot that you can gain by exploring various table top options starting off with the most obvious: vinyl.
Vinyl table tops come with a few benefits that make them a worthy option for anyone, including the most rigid. One of the most obvious benefits of vinyl based tops is that they give you a pretty aesthetic without being outrageously pricey. Vinyl is a relatively cheap material after all, but it looks so good that it gives your restaurant a premium feel. Being able to incorporate a luxurious vibe into your eatery at such a low cost is most certainly going to help you hit the ground running.
Another benefit of vinyl is how easy it is to replace. Many restaurant owners are at their wits end because of how frequently their furniture needs replacing, and this can be an enormous financial drag to boot. By using vinyl tops, you can make the replacement process a walk in the park. Simply stripping off the vinyl layer on top and replacing it with a fresh sheet can make your tables look brand new, and the cost benefit once again comes into play in this scenario by dramatically reducing replacement expenses.
If you’re on the look out for something a bit sturdier, we would suggest giving ceramic tops a try. This material is considerably more durable than vinyl, and it has the added advantage of being more resistant to water. Spills are inevitable in restaurants, because sooner or later a customer might accidentally knock a glass of fluid over onto the table. A ceramic tabletop won’t get ruined if this happens, and its relatively waterproof nature also makes it easier to clean.
What’s more is that ceramic is extremely durable, so while it costs more than vinyl you can save time by not having to worry about fixing it up after a spill. The great thing about vinyl is that even if it curls up after a spill, replacing the rapidly warping sheet would require a bare minimum of investment on your part. However, it would still require a fair bit of time and dedication, since the process takes a few hours to finish. Opting for ceramic eliminates the possibility of wasted days like this, so if the extra cost is worth it when considering the time saving aspect of the material, ceramic tops for your tables are a great alternative.
A couple of other extremely sturdy options are granite and marble. They are a lot more expensive than ceramic, but they bring a few prestige related advantages that make the price easier to swallow. A high end restaurant that provides marble tables will soon see itself soaring to the very top, so it can be useful to splurge a bit given the future revenue boosts this will bring your way. Granite is suitable if you’re into roughly hewn and rustic looks for your eatery, and it’s so durable that it would take a huge amount of force to damage it to any extent.
If a rustic or rough look appeals to you or your customer base, another option is that of butcher block tops. The name should give their appearance away, but an easy way to picture them is to imagine a tree stump that has not been sanded down. This is perhaps the least modern table top that your restaurant could use, and that makes it very trendy. Quite a few restaurants intentionally try to give their interior décor a very different feel, and many are moving away from the straight lines of the previous decade.
Of course, moving beyond wood will bring you to a different option entirely, namely glass table tops. Buying tempered glass tops makes breakage a remote possibility at most, and glass is arguably the easiest material to clean. It has virtually no absorption potential so you or your employees can give the tops quick wipe downs without worrying about water damage.
Restaurants with outdoor seating should definitely have some glass table tops, since they are most resistant to weather changes. Creating separate furnishing sets for indoor and outdoor diners can be wonderful because each dining style requires different qualities in its furniture. Glass outdoors and marble indoors helps you cater to a wider range of preferences and tastes, and combining granite tops with some butcher blocks is also a stellar combination. Using at least two table top variants is something that you should consider because it adds a bit of diversity.