Banqueting Furniture and Banquet Chairs

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Modern banqueting furniture must satisfy a range of functions in order to find a market in the UK. Until recently if a hotel, large restaurant or meeting hall had a requirement for a large quantity of banquet chairs and tables for a wedding or to promote their premises for Christmas parties or as a venue for a sales fair or large business meeting, they would simply hire the banquet chairs and banquet tables. Since the 1950's many catering equipment hire companies set up to accommodate these requirements and would have several hundred banquet chairs available in their stock to satisfy this demand. Marquee hire Companies also became a big user of banquet furniture, having the advantage of being able to provide not only the banquet tables and chairs but also the space for them to go into allowing the hotel, restaurant or private individual to use their land or garden to erect a marquee and increase their space for this short term demand.

In the past few years more and more Hotels and restaurants have chosen to buy their own banquet furniture as prices have fallen sharply due to the availability of cheap imports from China, Malaysia and other far eastern Countries. The quality of these banquet chairs is generally very good and chairs with steel, aluminium or wooden frames are available.

Because these banquet chairs are designed to stack safely to 10 or 12 high, they can be conveniently stored when not in use and brought out when a big function demands their use. The quality of some of the chairs is high enough that in some cases, proprietors will use them as their primary chair. The steel and aluminium banquet chairs are available with a wide variety of frame finishes, from gold, black or silver, through to translucent deep reds or even using a printed melamine that is baked onto the frame to give a very convincing wood effect. The traditional real-wood banquet chairs have decorative spindlebacks are finished in bright gold colour or pure white, which looks wonderful for a wedding but may be a little over the top for regular use. With this in mind many purchasers choose to retain the natural wood with a stained finish, most popularly in light oak, walnut or mahogany stain. Only the seat pad is upholstered on these wooden banquet chairs but they are very comfortable and of course the owner can choose a fabric which fits in with his or her hotel or restaurant interior. These chairs are also available with removable seat pads so that a range of seat colours can be offered to there customers which can be a really good selling point if the chairs are to be used for a wedding. The aluminium and steel banquet chairs have both the seat and the back upholstered and again the fabric can be specified to complement the decor.

Banquet tables can be bought in a wide range of sizes. A popular size is 150cm (5 feet) round which is ideal for seating 8 people dining or up to 10 people if they are only drinking. Another popular round banquet table size is 180cm (6 feet) which has sufficient diameter for 12 seated diners. Rectangular banquet tables are usually 180cm in length by 68 or 70cm width which can be set out as individual tables or placed in lines for a continuous run of tabling. The tables are normally covered with either linen table cloths or paper banquet rolls for the more convenient and less expensive disposable option.

Modern banquet tables are supplied with folding leg mechanisms that give the unit much greater versatility and can be brought out when needed and then stored away when not in use. Previously some catering Companies would buy banquet tables from government army auctions or make their own tables by making wooden folding legs joined with steel hinges simply screwed together to make the leg unit and use tongue and grooved planks for the table top secured at each end with wooden battens. In the last few years the cost of making these in terms of time and materials has been more and more prohibitive when compared to the many cheap imported options available from the far east and eastern Europe. Now the norm is to use steel leg mechanisms which are usually either copies of the American wishbone design or the straight German style folding mechanism that uses a separate locking clip bolted through the table top. Both of these styles are very rigid and the leg mechanism locks securely in the open or closed position.

The tops of the factory made banquet tables are available with biscuit jointed or tongue and groove jointed pine tops usually with a gloss lacquer finish and because the tops are professionally made the joints of the wooden boards are very close fitting, giving the appearance of a top made from a single piece of timber and quite attractive enough to be used without a table cloth if required. Alternatively tops are available in plywood or with a melamine or high pressure laminate veneer to give a waterproof finish that is very easy to clean and suitable for food preparation use. If this kind of top is chosen it is important to know that the underside of the table top has a 'balancer' - that is a similarly waterproof melamine veneer applied to the underside - so that the top does not warp due to the ingress of water. Recently another style of folding banquet table has been produced by factories in China using an injection molded plastic top with steel underframe. These are not so much more expensive than wooden versions but can be surprisingly heavy and prone to the plastic splitting which can render the table unservicable as they are not easily repaired.

Article Source: http://www.theukarticledirectory.co.uk