A Short Guide to Commercial Outdoor Café Furniture

If you’re planning on utilising outdoor space so that you can cater for more customers at your cafe, then perhaps you’re looking at purchasing more furniture, such as tables and chairs. With such a wide variety of styles and materials to choose from, it can be difficult knowing what to buy.

What is commercial furniture?

The first thing to take account of is the fact that you really need to check that any furniture that you’re considering is indeed commercial furniture and not furniture that you might use for home use. Commercial furniture has been specifically designed and tested for business use in places such as cafes where it will be used by large numbers of people over long periods of time. Typically, outdoor furniture is made from materials such as wood, metal, plastic, and rattan and finished with hard wearing materials to make it more durable. We’ve put together a quick guide, to help you with your choice.

Metal furniture

Metal furniture is one of the most popular choices for outdoor use because of its weatherproof qualities. Because both steel and aluminium are lightweight, it’s also able to be moved around easily and stored at the end of the day. With very little maintenance required, metal furniture is a really good option.

Wood furniture

Traditional and aesthetically attractive, wood furniture is another popular choice for outdoor use. Teak is a popular choice provided it’s been treated to withstand all types of weather. In addition, there is plenty of ‘wood style’ furniture which uses synthetic timber panels which are treated to be UV resilient, so they don’t fade, and are water resistant too.

Plastic furniture

Today’s plastic chairs are made from polypropylene and usually mould injected so there are no seams to weaken, crack, or split. They come in a rainbow of colours and a huge variety of modern, exciting styles. While, they’ve always been regarded as being a low budget choice, our plastic chairs are good quality and extremely durable.

Take our Belle chairs, for example. These stylish chairs are available in some lovely summer colours which are sure to brighten up your space and come with or without armrests.

For those of you that like a traditional look, then how about our resin cross back Bentwood chairs with their rattan seats. We can’t get enough of them!

Rattan

Finally, you might want to consider rattan furniture. Traditionally this used to be made from natural grasses woven into a pattern and stretched over a bamboo frame. While it looks rustic and charming, unfortunately it doesn’t last long outdoors as the natural materials tend to split and crack in the heat or rot in the rain.

Nowadays commercial rattan furniture is made from nylon stretched over an aluminium frame. Our Parisian chairs feature a powder coated frame for extra durability and an attractive chevron finish to the body.

Here at Café Furniture Melbourne we stock a wide range of outdoor café furniture and are constantly adding to our inventory. Why not browse our online store, download our furniture catalogue for future reference, or visit our showroom to check it out for yourself.