Restaurant furniture has always served something of a dual purpose, as we have noted before - chairs need to be comfortable enough to accommodate diners potentially for several hours throughout their meal and dessert or coffee, but dining can be seen as quite a formal experience by many people too.
Now it seems the attitude of many diners is swinging firmly in favour of relaxation, even if it means the environment in which they are seated becomes more informal than has historically been the case.
According to a survey from Mintel, 46% of diners in the UK now prioritise a 'relaxed experience' from their meal, and this figure still reaches 38% when the meal is part of a special occasion or celebration, suggesting that for many people, even a significant event does not raise the desire for formality.
This aligns well with many people's overall intentions from eating out - for a third of people it is just about relaxing and unwinding, while 16% of those who have eaten out in the past three months admit that they did so partly just to get out of cooking and washing up.
And the desire for a relaxed environment in which to eat is leading many customers to prefer pub furniture to more formal restaurant furniture; some 60% of those surveyed have eaten in a pub in the past three months, or 'ordered food to go' - perhaps more likely from a pop-up barbecue than a takeaway cooked meal from behind the bar itself.
Whether investing in pub furniture suitable for diners, or restaurant furniture that caters for this trend towards casual dining, it seems clear that this is a trend that is unlikely to reverse anytime soon.
As such, it might be worth considering installing more sofas and armchair-style seating, or upholstered chairs if fabric alone seems likely to achieve the right balance of casual and formal.
The coming years may require some experimentation on the part of venues trying to strike the perfect compromise, and in order to keep pace with the specific progress of this trend.
But with a good variety of pub furniture and restaurant furniture alike already commercially available, the building blocks are in place for owners and managers to capitalise on the potential offered by these new casual consumers.