The sheer diversity in restaurant booths can sometimes seem like a dream come true, particularly for those business owners who like to mix things up as often as they can help it. However, there is a downside to having such an abundance of options. Unless you have been in the business for several years, you might not know what you need to look for. When you take a look at just how much variation there can be, you’d probably get so overwhelmed that you’d put the decision off for another day!
We would advise that you avoid giving up so quickly, since there are some things that you can do to narrow down your options. A good place to start might be to analyze what material options you have for your restaurant booth seating. They can be covered in all sorts of fabrics, each of which have their own pros and cons.
Vinyl Booths
Perhaps the most popular option available is that of vinyl. Vinyl booths, similar to some of these Plymold restaurant dining chairs, have been a time honored component of interior dining for so long that many people automatically assume that all booths are covered with them.
We can certainly see where this assumption might stem from, and while it isn’t exactly true that vinyl is the only material worth exploring, it does have some upsides that you might want to wrap your head around.
For starters, vinyl is a really durable material. You need something robust if you want to cater to enough customers, since each patron would cause a small amount of wear and tear that will accumulate into absolute degradation surprisingly quickly. The great thing about vinyl is that it is really smooth, so there is a lower likelihood of abrasion that occurs.
Furthermore, the structural integrity of this material makes it so that sharper objects won’t be able to pierce it. That can happen fairly often if your customer drops a knife, so you ideally want to give yourself some protection from the costs this can incur.
You won’t be able to keep your business going for much longer if you have to keep replacing the upholstery of your booths, after all. Vinyl is so strong that you can rely on it for years on end, and only change the upholstery in the event that you are trying to change up the look of the place rather than for any practical reasons.
The final and perhaps most essential benefit of vinyl is how affordable it is. Restaurants operate on razor thin margins, which makes it useful to cut down costs to the best of your abilities. Low cost vinyl requires hardly any upfront investment, and the longevity of the material can keep your expenses at rock bottom for the foreseeable future.
Material
Upon reading all of this, some might begin to wonder if there is any material that can compare to vinyl on these fronts. Well, if you are operating a restaurant in a hotter part of the world, you might want to get something that is a bit more breathable. Fabric can be a fair alternative because of the relatively large spaces between the fibers. Cotton fabric is the most common one to cover booths with, and it also gives you more options in terms of color.
Adding some splashes of bright colors here and there throughout the restaurant can really liven up the place. Thanks to how absorbent cotton can be, you can dye it with multiple shades and create an engaging and attractive environment that your customers might never want to leave.
Fabric on Booths
The absorbent nature of fabric on booths might lead you to conclude that they would be an outright nightmare to clean, but you should know that this just isn’t true. While it would be factual to assert that fabric is not as easy to clean as vinyl by virtue of its absorbent properties, you can render it spick and span just by giving it a quick spritz with a fabric cleaner followed by some scrubbing with a wet cloth.
Now, if you really want your booth seating to have a top of the line appearance, you can splurge for some leather. The rustic charm and prestige of this material lends an aura of elite allure to your restaurant. People that are responsible for some of the most consequential decisions would want to come over to your eatery so that they can hash things out, mostly due to how the leather gives them a sense of power.
Price Range
Some might say that leather is a bit too outside of their price range, but there is a fix for every problem including this one. If you want the look of leather but don’t have the money to afford the real thing, faux leather might be even better if you think about it. It looks so similar that barely anyone would be able to tell the difference, and you get a lot of the same benefits as vinyl in terms of cleaning and affordability.
There’s nothing stopping you from combining these materials either. Creating a vinyl surface with some fabric attached to it can be a brilliant way to think outside of the box. Customers are sick and tired of seeing the same places and eating the same food every day, so they’d be quite grateful if you tried to do something that no one else has.
It will take some times to be able to say with any degree of certainty which material is actually the best of them all. Your needs will shape your decisions in this regard. Try to start off by listing them down and seeing what matters more to you and pretty soon a concrete answer will start to appear before your very eyes.
