Corporate Uniforms for Cafes: lead time
By The Velocity Wear Team
Cafe uniforms are produced in 10 to 15 working days once artwork is approved, with delivery transit after that. The reason openings run short of kit is almost never the production window — it is that the uniform order is raised after the fit-out, the signage and the coffee machine, by which point there are three weeks left and no artwork approved.
What is the realistic date for an opening?
Six weeks ahead of the doors opening is comfortable; four is tight but workable if the logo already exists as a proper vector file. Inside that, you are relying on nothing going wrong, and something usually does — a colour that needs confirming, a size list that changes when the last barista is hired, a print that needs resizing after the first proof.
Raise the uniform order at the same time as the signage rather than after it. They use the same artwork, they answer the same brand questions, and doing them together means one decision covers both. Our wholesale uniforms page covers the garments a counter team normally needs.
How early should a seasonal order go in?
Before the season starts, which sounds obvious and is routinely ignored. A cafe that doubles its team over summer needs those garments in hand during the quiet month beforehand, not in the second week of the rush. Count back from the first busy weekend: transit, then 10 to 15 working days, then a week for your own approvals. That puts the order comfortably inside the preceding month.
If you take a sample, add its round to the front of that, because the £150 sample is made and shipped before bulk production begins and is credited against the bulk order afterwards. The wider picture of production timelines applies across products and is worth a read if you are new to ordering.
Ordering twice a year rather than reacting to each shortage also makes the timing easier to live with. A cafe that places one run before summer and one before the winter trade is never waiting on production during a busy week, and larger single runs sit further up the quantity tiers — which step at 50, 100, 250, 500 and 1,000 pieces, reaching as much as 35% off the 50-piece price. Tiers are worked out on each order rather than added together across the year, so the planned run is cheaper as well as calmer.
What can you do while the order is in production?
Use the fortnight rather than waiting through it.
- Agree who holds the stock and where. A cafe with no storeroom needs that answered before a box of fifty arrives mid-service.
- Write the issue policy: how many garments each person gets, what happens when one is ruined, and whether anything comes back when they leave.
- Confirm the delivery address and a time when somebody will be there to sign, which is not the middle of the breakfast rush.
- Decide the laundry arrangement, because staff washing their own kit and a contract service produce very different garment lifespans.
The restaurants and hospitality page covers the garment side for counter and floor teams, and the restaurant and cafe staff uniform guide goes further into what each role tends to wear.
Tell whoever takes the delivery what to check on arrival, and have them do it that day rather than a week later. Counting the sizes against the order and looking at the print on one garment from each size takes ten minutes. Finding a discrepancy on the day it lands leaves time to resolve it; finding it the night before the opening does not.
