Restaurants come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and you need to be quite careful about what you offer your customers since this can impact the trajectory of your career in an assortment of ways. A common mistake that many newbie restaurateurs tend to make when they are taking their first tentative steps into the murky waters of entrepreneurship is that they focus almost exclusively on providing a fully decked out interior dining experience. While this can be a good way to get your foot in through the door, it can limit your ability to advance your enterprise since outdoor seating is a must have for the modern diner.
In order to provide your customers with enough variety that they have a reason to keep coming back time and time again, you need to consider giving them an outdoor patio. This will really come in handy when the day is sunny and breezy, with most customers lining up to sit in the great outdoors and feel the warmth on their face while the cool wind keeps their body temperature relatively comfortable.
Now, if you’re planning to add an outdoor seating area for customers that are on the lookout for such things, you will obviously need restaurant chairs that can meet the needs of the day. The question of which chairs are best suited for outdoor spaces is a pertinent one to take into consideration. We are going to start off by outlining the qualities that these chairs are ideally supposed to possess.
First, and arguably most importantly, these chairs need to be built to withstand all different types of weather. The sun will frequently beat down on these chairs, and if you don’t buy something that is made of the right kind of material this can lead to a tremendous amount of wear and tear.
Metal chairs can be quite the buy in situations like this. This material is famous for being able to take a lot of heat, and there won’t be any color that would end up fading away either. Aluminum is a lightweight alloy that is exceptional for outdoor areas, since it does not way a ton nor does it heat up to the same level as some other materials.
Don’t take this to mean that aluminum is the end all be all of outdoor chairs for restaurants, though. You also stand to gain a lot be investing in wooden chairs, although you should bear in mind that the wood needs to be treated to make it more resilient.
Adding a coating of lacquer to chairs that you place outside of the interior premises of your eatery can increase its protection from the elements. It creates a layer that prevents UV radiation from reaching the inner most core of the piece of furniture, thereby rendering it considerably more safe from the damage that would have forced you to spend inordinate amounts on annual furniture replacement.
Of course, if you are offering chairs you need to add some padding to the equation as well. This is where some more complications can arise, since a lot of fabric types just aren’t built to last all that long in an outdoor environment. Sunlight can wear the cloth away until it is in tatters, so opting for thicker materials would be a better course of action for you to take.
So far, we have covered metal and wooden chairs and how they can be a big help to you in your pursuit of becoming a central location for people that want to grab a delicious meal in the beauty of nature. Now, what if we told you that there is another material that might just be the best of all?
We are talking about plastic, and it would be downright impossible to list down all of the many reasons why it has become the material of choice for outdoor oriented restaurant seating arrangements. For starters, plastic is so durable that you would have to put quite a lot of effort into damaging it to even the smallest extent. Kids that come to your restaurant would never be able to do anything beyond nicking and scratching it, but its benefits in an outdoor context go several steps beyond this as well.
You see, plastic already comes coated with all of the necessary ingredients for outdoor success. You wouldn’t even need to worry about how the sun might harm your plastic based chairs. To top all of that off, plastic chairs are also great during rainy days! They can be left out while it is pouring and absorb practically no moisture, nor would they run the risk of rusting which can compromise their structural integrity.
Another factor that you need to ponder over is the portability of your chairs. Regardless of how durable they are, you will inevitably need to move them in and out of your eatery based on how much foot traffic you are experiencing at any given point. Keeping all of your chairs outside at all times is not all that good of an idea, since you can seriously increase their life expectancy by only placing them there as and when required.
This basically means that you should try your best to buy lightweight chairs for your outdoor dining areas. Customers that want to sit outside can simply request that you set up a table, and your servers wouldn’t need to injure themselves hauling overly bulky furniture all the way across the dining room. Thinking practically and holistically about your chairs can create opportunities for things to become much easier down the line both for yourself as well as for the people that are paying to order your well cooked and diverse meal selections.
