We live in interesting times. Take, for instance, the way we eat. Over the past 50 years or so, British eating habits have undergone a complete transformation. Dishes that once would have seemed impossibly exotic – pasta, pizza, rice, curry, street food – have become staples. In 2001, the then British foreign secretary Robin Cook proclaimed that chicken tikka masala had become our “national dish”, combining the spiced foods brought here by immigrants from the Indian subcontinent with our own liking for a gravy-like sauce.
Meanwhile there has been an explosion of cafés, restaurants, bistros and gastro-pubs. New meals such as brunch have appeared; dinner has become lunch, and tea has become dinner. Outside the home, coffee has overtaken tea as our drink of choice; thanks to the growth of our coffee culture and chains such as Caffè Nero and Costa, according to market research group NPD, we now drink more than twice the amount of coffee as we do tea.
This has led to a surge in business opportunities – and not just for the big café and restaurant chains, such as Starbucks and Pizza Express. Independent cafés and restaurants are growing in number, offering a distinctive, local, personal alternative to the homogenous high-street stalwarts.
Café vs Restaurant
If you run a café or a restaurant, or are setting one up, one of the first things you will need to think about – having found your premises – will be furniture. But what’s the difference between café and restaurant furniture? Essentially, it’s about the kind of experience you are offering your customers: a café will be more casual, while a restaurant will offer something more formal. And your furniture should reflect this.
Café furniture
Café customers do not generally stay for a long time. Usually, they’re popping in for a drink, a snack or a light meal. So they will not expect to sink into a plushly upholstered chair or stretch out at an expansive linen-covered table. Café furniture, therefore, is lighter, often brighter in colour and more modern in design. You might say that café furniture is “friendly”: chairs will be made in materials such as melamine with light wood or faux leather finishes. Alternatively, old-style bentwood chairs and wooden bistro chairs offer a more continental-style café experience.
Café tables, meanwhile, will generally be smaller than restaurant tables. The surfaces will take a lot of wear and punishment, so they’ll need to be tough and hard-wearing. Again, as with chairs, café tables generally follow one of two styles: bright and contemporary, with metal legs and bases and tops finished in wood veneers; or there’s the more traditional style – bentwood, cast iron, and so on.
Stools, meanwhile, can be used for customers sitting at the counter or clustered around high “poseur” tables. Bear in mind, too, that some of your customers will be on their own, so you should offer enough small tables to accommodate them. Also in recent years we have seen the growth of the “communal table”, where people are happy to cluster around and share the space. This could be one large table, or several shunted together.
Restaurant furniture
A visit to a restaurant is meant to be an occasion, a treat. So your customers will need to feel that they are being looked after, pampered, special. This begins, of course, with the welcome they receive, but it extends to the furniture. They will want to feel comfortable, of course, but a restaurant’s chairs and tables will also need to convey a visual message: this is not just a meal – this is an event. High-backed chairs, upholstered in attractive fabrics or leather, will make a serious statement, as well as keeping customers comfortable over a period of time. (A good furniture supplier will offer a choice of fabrics for upholstery, or will even upholster furniture in fabrics supplied by the customer). If you have space, you might even consider providing some tub chairs – ideal for sinking into over a long lunch or dinner.
Tables, meanwhile, need to be large and solid. If you are using table linen, the surface is perhaps less important, but still bear in mind that the legs or base will be on show. For flexibility, you might think about tables that can be shunted together for larger groups of diners. Farmhouse chairs and tables are good for creating a more homely, traditional environment.
Blurrred Lines
So far, so good. But are the differences between cafés and restaurants really so clear-cut these days? Many cafés now offer substantial meals, albeit from a relatively limited menu, while many restaurants now offer a more informal dining experience. In some cases, a café by day will become a restaurant by night, a transformation that can be achieved with the addition of table linen, candles and low lighting.
All this is a reflection of the nation’s changing eating and dining-out habits: we are becoming less hung-up about mealtimes, about informal vs formal, about cafés vs restaurants. We might have burgers for brunch or scrambled eggs at 4pm or pizza at 10pm. The traditional boundaries that once divided the day into strict mealtimes have become less clear-cut.
It may be an exaggeration to say that we are witnessing “the death of fine dining”, but there is certainly a trend towards greater informality in our restaurants. Hushed atmospheres, starched linen and obsequious wine waiters are becoming less common in the fine dining sector – partly for cost reasons, but also because diners these days simply want to relax and feel less inhibited. When Kenny Atkinson opened his House of Tides restaurant in Newcastle, he decided to do away with tablecloths and wine waiters and create a friendly, relaxed atmosphere. “We want guests to have a laugh and enjoy the food,” he told The Guardian.
So if you are looking to create a similarly flexible, friendly environment, you might wish to take the lead with your furniture, offering a mixture of styles. If you run a café, a scattering of more formal, upholstered or leather armchairs could be combined with more casual contemporary chairs. A restaurant, meanwhile, might combine simple chairs with banquettes. And rather than the traditional formal arrangement of rows of tables, you might want to take a more mixed approach using, say, square and round tables, which can be rearranged if larger groups come in. If you’re doing without tablecloths, bare tabletops can be enhanced by small vases or jugs of flowers, or candles.
Also, bear in mind that people these days are less hung-up about dining solo – a couple of years ago, research revealed that the number of solo diners had doubled over the previous two years. So make sure you have enough smaller tables to accommodate them. And don’t shunt solo diners into the corner: they are not embarrassed to be eating alone.