T-Shirts for Cafes: size splits
By The Velocity Wear Team
Sizes mix freely inside the 50-piece minimum, and a cafe has an advantage over a retailer: you know who is wearing them. Start by issuing three shirts to each current member of staff in their actual size, then spread whatever is left as a new-starter buffer weighted toward the middle sizes. For a six-person team that is eighteen issued and thirty-two held back.
How should a cafe split fifty shirts?
In two blocks rather than one curve. Block one is the current team, counted person by person — ask everyone rather than assuming, because getting it wrong means someone works a year in a shirt that does not fit. Block two is the buffer, and that is where a curve applies: weight it to M and L, keep a few S and XL, and hold one or two at each end. The wholesale t-shirts page shows which bases and fits are available to order.
How many shirts does each barista need?
Three is the working number for a full-time role. One on, one in the wash, one clean in the locker. Two leaves someone stuck when a wash cycle runs late, and four is generous unless your shifts are long or the work is particularly messy. Part-time staff can run on two. That arithmetic is what makes fifty pieces reasonable for a team of six, as our cost guide sets out.
Bear in mind that hospitality shirts get hot washes far more often than retail ones do. A 240 GSM cotton holds its shape through that better than a 150 GSM one, and it also stays opaque, which matters for staff comfort under bright service lighting.
Should the split match the current team exactly?
No, and this is where cafes most often go wrong. Ordering only the sizes your current staff wear leaves you unable to kit out a new starter who happens to be a different size, and staff turnover in hospitality is high enough that this happens within months. The buffer is the point of the fifty. Spread it, even into sizes nobody currently wears, because an unissued XL is worth far more than a fourth shirt for someone who already has three. The restaurants and hospitality page covers the wider uniform this sits in.
What happens when someone leaves?
Decide the policy before it comes up. Most cafes let staff keep worn shirts, which is simpler and avoids a laundry argument, and simply issue new ones from the buffer. That means your buffer depletes at roughly the rate of your turnover, which is the number that should trigger the next order rather than a date in the calendar. Our reordering guide covers setting that trigger point.
How should the shirts be issued and tracked?
Keep the unissued stock in one place, not scattered behind the counter, and write down who took what and when. A single sheet taped inside the cupboard door does the job. Without it nobody knows whether you have twelve shirts left or two, and the answer only surfaces when a new starter arrives on their first morning.
Issue three at a time to a new full-time starter rather than one, because handing out shirts weekly is how the count gets lost. Part-timers can start on two. And note the size issued alongside the name, since that list becomes the evidence base for the next order rather than a fresh round of guessing.
It takes about two minutes per starter and removes most of the uncertainty from the whole process. The manager who inherits the cupboard next year will be able to answer the sizing question at a glance rather than by counting shirts in a cupboard on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
