Often, price is the number one consideration for restaurants and other hospitality businesses when they decide to purchase restaurant tables and chairs. The products’ durability and delivery lead time follow just a short distance behind price in the purchasing research process. It may be more important to consider the value of the restaurant furniture, instead of the specific price of the table or chair.
When researching products on the Internet, you will find many different price points for the items that look essentially the same. Although two chairs look the same, they may not be of the same quality or constructed the same. When it comes to value, a great question to consider is whether the restaurant table or restaurant chair fits the application it is intended to be used for. For example, foreign manufactured wooden chairs in a heavy-traffic fast food restaurant may not last 6 months, whereas the same chairs in a quiet coffee shop may last for years. If the fast food restaurant paid $75 per foreign chair and replaced them all in one year, the total expenditure is $150 per chair for the first year. But if the fast food restaurant purchased American-made wooden chairs for $125 each, which held up to the high traffic, then their net cost would have been $125 per chair for the first year, versus $150 for the foreign chair. Sometimes, paying more up-front is the better way to go. Consider that if 100 chairs were purchased, and you saved $25 per chair for the first year, the total savings would have been $2,500. To decide which restaurant chair is a better value for your business, you need an accurate estimate of how many people will be sitting in each chair every day to try to anticipate how customers may treat the furniture. Other considerations may impact the value also, such as when cleaning is being done, will staff be stacking the chairs on top of the restaurant tables which causes additional wear on the tables and chairs? Or will the staff gently sweep around each chair? Paying for a better chair than you need can also affect the value of the furniture, because you would be tying up your business dollars in fixed assets that you don’t need.
Think of your restaurant tables and chairs just like you would your food specialties. For example, suppose your restaurant specialty is steak. Certainly, you would know the difference between round steak, top sirloin or filet mignon. These differences affect your cost, what your customer would expect to pay, and what your customer expects from each serving of your steak. No matter what a restaurant serves, someone has gone through and researched which items to serve, the value they provide, and how to price them. Other equipment such as restaurant chairs and tables are no different. You need to become knowledgeable about restaurant furniture, so you can receive full value, just as you would your restaurant’s specialty.
