April 11
Advantages of Booths
One of the reasons why booths are virtually a perfect choice for any restaurant is that they create a great sense of comfort, privacy, and even intimacy. They also help the restaurant to create less traffic and reduce or eliminate – depending on how many books you have – the necessity for your waiter to move around four sides of the table. In addition to this, restaurant booths are available in an array of colors and designs. So, they can easily add a sense of style and warmth to your establishment.
Financial Benefits
Some restaurant owners hesitate to use commercial booths instead of tables and chairs because of the higher per-unit cost involved. While it is true that booths are going to require a higher initial upfront investment, in the long term they offer restaurant owners one of the most space and cost-efficient layouts they can choose for their dining room. For instance, if you install a table with a base and four chairs, the floor space should be over 35 square feet. If you have a relatively small dining room, this is a lot of space.
By contrast, if you choose a booth that seats four people, this will take up approximately 21 square feet. So by choosing to install a commercial booth instead of a table, you can potentially increase the number of customers your seat by 30% – potentially meaning 30% more revenue on a busy night. So booth seating can help you both with spacing and with your bottom line. Given this, the spacing benefits from using booths can at least partially offset any additional cost.
Booth Design Options
With the incredibly wide range of restaurant booths available, it’s not too difficult to find the ideal combination of styles, designs, and colors for your restaurant. You can choose from many different heights, widths, lengths, as well as selecting either a wall bench, double, single, 1/2 circle or 3/4 circle type. In addition to this, you could choose to combine a wall bench with a few small tables, which makes it easier for couples to sit together in conversation while still allowing you to rearrange things into a larger table for a bigger group.
Designing a Layout
When trying to determine how you’re going to layout your booths in your restaurant, it’s obviously important to take into account seating dimensions. Clearly, you also have to consider the size of the dining room tables as well. Normally, your layout should allow the table edge to be vertically aligned with the outside edge of the seat in your booth. This should provide a relatively comfortable 16 to 18-inch depth for seating. Booths that are combined with tables that are 30 inches wide will require 72 inches from the middle of the top caps. On the other hand, a 24-inch table will only need 66 inches.
Having this understanding of the standard booth dimensions used in restaurant seating makes creating a layout much easier. This means you will be able to increase your restaurant’s profits by maximizing the number of guests you can serve at the same time. Of course, the number of people you can seat in a restaurant at the same time can be limited by things other than just the number of tables and seats, including fire codes and health codes. Also, certain types of restaurants need to have a theme or ambiance that just won’t work with having too many people in too small of a space.
Think about Comfort
You also have to take into consideration the comfort of your customers when choosing commercial booths and positioning them in your layout. For instance, when you’re combining a 24-inch table and a commercial booth, a table with a cantilever base is usually your best option. The bottoms of these tables are anchored to the wall and offer substantial support without taking away from your guest’s leg room.
And the legroom is certainly a key consideration when choosing a booth since the principal reason many customers object to booths is that they find them uncomfortable. The comfort of the seats themselves is also an important point to keep in mind. If customers do not want to sit in the commercial booths and instead choose tables with chairs, it’s almost equivalent to not having the booths at all.
Careful Booth Positioning
Another important point to think about when laying out your booth positions in your dining space is where they will be relative to doors, hallways and other entrances or exits. If your restaurant is located in an area where it’s especially windy, cold or rainy, you don’t want a booth too close to the doors leading outside. Similarly, positioning the commercial booths too near to the restrooms means people will have other guests passing by them throughout their meal.
Selecting and laying out the booths for your restaurant dining room can have a huge impact on whether your guests are comfortable and satisfied – which in turn influences their decision about whether they should come back again. While your booths need to be cost-effective and carefully laid out for space you have available, it’s essential that you make choices that do not damage your bottom line by turning off customers. But with all the options to choose from, it shouldn’t be hard to find something that’s right for your business.
