Cushion Repair for Restaurant Chairs

It’s inevitable: as your restaurant gains more customers and business, the once brand-new chairs you bought for the dining room are going to wear out.

 

While plastic, wood, and metal chairs are more resistant to constant restaurant traffic, upholstered chairs take the greatest beating. The fabric fades, tears, and becomes less resistant to stains, and the foam insert for the cushion itself sags and loses shape.

 

All this wear and tear creates problems for both your business and your customers. Dingy, worn out upholstery negatively impacts the overall ambiance of your business, making it darker and drearier.

 

This in turn affects the way customers view your business. Customers go out to eat for the location and atmosphere as much as the food, and worn-out cushions make the restaurant look outdated, poorly run, and unsanitary.

 

This sends a bad message to people coming to your business for the first time and likely will keep others from becoming repeated customers.

 

The trick to retaining a clean, bright appearance for your upholstered chairs is not to allow them to reach the point of disrepair to begin with. Rips, tears, and fading need to be dealt with quickly and as soon as they are noticed.

 

Dealing with seating issues when they appear ultimately makes cushion repair for your seating a lot less complicated, sectioning it into a series of small repairs as opposed to a major expense.

 

Knowing your options for cushion repair can prolong the life of your seating as well as save your restaurant money.

 

Outsourcing Your Cushion Repair

 

There’s one big problem, however: repairs take time and resources, and restaurant owners typically don’t have to devote to maintaining their chair cushions themselves. Running the business and catering to customers is their primary responsibility, which makes it easier to let upholstery repair fall by the wayside.

 

Not only that, but restaurant owners often make the false (and costly) assumption that the minute something begins to look worn out with their chairs, it means it’s time to replace them.

In fact, one of the benefits of upholstered chairs is that when the cushions start wearing out from repeated use, they are the only thing that needs to be repaired. In most cases, repairing or replacing the entire chair is not necessary and is actually wasteful.

 

Because of this, many restaurants partner with furniture repair operations to make repairs to their furniture, which costs far less than it would to order completely new chairs. In fact, these repair jobs frequently make the cushions look newer even after they’ve been used for some time.

 

Again, the key to taking advantage of upholstery repair services for your chair cushions is managing the problem before it grows into something larger. If you notice that a small number of your cushions are developing small rips, fading, or losing their shape, it might be a good time to contact a repair expert.

 

Waiting until the problem affects all your chairs, or worse, multiple issues begin to develop, can force you into replacing your furniture rather than simply making minor, less costly repairs.

 

Advantages of Cushion Repair for Your Business

 

 

Sending your cushions out to a business that specializes in upholstery repair gets right to the source of the problem and keeps you from having to invest in all-new furniture. However, the benefits of this process to your restaurant go far beyond this fact.

 

For one thing, having only the cushions professionally repaired saves you from having to close your business while new furniture is installed.

 

Ordering and installing new seating takes a lot of time and effort--the old chairs must be removed and disposed of, you have to wait for the new chairs to be delivered, and then you need to actually set up and arrange them.

 

What this adds up to is a few days or more of lost business and profits, and because of this, a total replacement of all your chairs is a last-resort solution that you should make every effort to avoid.

 

Instead, trusting your cushion repair to furniture professionals can save you time, stress, and money, allowing experts to identify the best approach and take the steps you need to restore the upholstery.

 

Another advantage of having cushions repaired rather than replaced is that your business gets to keep its original look. Having to replace all the chairs could force you into reworking your restaurant’s interior design if the original type of chairs you selected is no longer available.

 

Because furniture restoration experts work to correct the flaws in your chairs, it’s likely that you’ll get to keep the style you started out with.

 

Regardless, sending your cushion repair to another business that specializes in upholstery can allow you to keep your restaurant up and running while saving time and money, especially since many projects can take under a day to complete.

 

 

Buying New Cushions

 

While sending your worn out cushions to an upholstery repair business can help solve small seating problems, the truth remains: your cushions will still wear out with repeated use and become harder to fix.

 

However, this doesn’t mean you have to replace all your chairs just yet. Another easy option for worn out restaurant chairs is to simply order new cushions.

 

Many chair manufacturers offer replacements for when tears, stains, and faded areas become too much to maintain. Available in an assortment of colors and sizes, getting new cushions can ensure that you’re able to continue using your chairs while addressing any problems that exist with the seat itself.

 

Moda Seating offers a wide range of replacement seats and chair cushions, making it easy to replace cushions that have endured multiple repairs.

 

Tips for Maintaining Your Cushions

 

 

Like we said earlier: cushion repair for your restaurant chairs is inevitable. The number of people who come through your business and use the seating means that the upholstery will get stained, the colors will fade, and the cushions will become lumpy and lose their shape.

 

You as a restaurant owner may not have the time to fix all these issues yourself. But you and your staff can prolong the life of your cushions and reduce the time between repairs by performing daily maintenance and knowing what to do avoid.

 

Know your chair’s washability

Washability is the ability of a fabric to be washed without bleeding, fading, or shrinking. All upholstery is labeled with a code that tells you what substances can and cannot be used for cleaning.

 

For example, some fabrics are labeled with a W, meaning that only water-based cleaners can be used with them. Others include an S, which indicates that only water-free or dry cleaning solvents should be used for cleaning.

 

Cleaning your upholstery with the right agent doesn’t just prevent damage from a cleaner that isn’t compatible with the fabric--it preserves the upholstery and helps it to last.

 

Be careful of the effects of sunlight

 

Prolonged exposure to sunlight causes fabric to fade, so it’s important to be strategic with the position of your chairs to avoid direct contact with natural light. You can also make use of curtains and window treatments to limit the amount of sunlight your chairs are exposed to.

 

Turn cushions over.

 

If the cushions have the same fabric on both sides, turning them over can make the gradual wear and tear more uniform, making the foam padding last longer and keep it from becoming saggy or lumpy.

 

We can help

 

At Moda Seating, we understand how critical your purchase of commercial chairs is to your restaurant. Not only are you investing in the overall style and look of your restaurant, but more importantly, you’re investing in your customers’ comfort and increasing the likelihood that they’ll come back.

 

We want to help you make the best decision to both purchase restaurant seating now and ensure that it lasts.

 

We are here to help you find the perfect chair...guaranteed.

 

We’d be happy to discuss your restaurant project further with a free quote and determine which of our products would best fit your business.

 

In addition, Moda Seating offers the Chair Care Checklist, a list of guidelines to help you establish procedures for chair maintenance in your restaurant.

This checklist can be used to both help you determine the condition of your seating and teach your employees how to take care of the chairs, as well as identify when cushion repair may be needed.

 

For more information, visit us at modaseating.com or contact us at 1-800-275-3266. Remember….at Moda Seating, we go beyond the chair.

Liquid error (sections/article-template line 93): Could not find asset snippets/articles.custom_fields.liquid