Wholesale Caps for Restaurants
By The Velocity Wear Team
Restaurants buy caps for two very different jobs. Back of house needs something washable, light and adjustable that keeps hair out of the way through a service. Front of house needs something that looks deliberate next to the rest of the uniform. Caps start at $12 a piece at the fifty-piece minimum, and one design can cover both rooms if the style is chosen with the kitchen in mind first.
Which cap belongs in a kitchen?
Something unstructured and light. A kitchen runs hot, and a stiff buckram front becomes uncomfortable fast, so a dad cap or a soft five-panel is the more sensible choice. A mesh-backed trucker is cooler still and is the one style most kitchens ask for by name once they have tried it. Whatever the style, an adjustable back matters more here than anywhere: caps get shared across shifts and agency cover, and nothing should depend on a head measurement.
Front of house can afford to be firmer and smarter. A structured six-panel holds its shape across a shift and gives an embroidered logo a clean base, which photographs well and matches the more tailored look most dining rooms want. The options and their decoration limits are set out on the wholesale caps page.
How do caps cope with heat, grease and washing?
Better than uniform shirts, because the panel that takes the wear is small and the decoration sits on a stiffer surface. Embroidery is the right method in a kitchen: thread does not soften, lift or discolour the way a cheap print will after a run of hot washes and grease contact. Expect the cap itself to be the consumable rather than the logo, which is the argument for ordering a working reserve rather than exactly one per head.
Dark colours hide kitchen life better than pale ones, which is why most back-of-house caps end up black or a deep colour even when the brand palette is lighter. If the brand colour matters, keep it on the floor staff and run the kitchen in something more forgiving, which is possible inside one design if the cap colours use the same stitched logo.
What does a restaurant cap order cost?
Fifty caps at $12 a piece is the entry point, and that quantity covers a single site with a healthy reserve or two smaller sites without one. The price falls through five tiers as the quantity rises, up to 35% below the fifty-piece price at the top, so a group with several venues should order once for the group rather than site by site. Production is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, before transit.
How do you cover several sites in one order?
Run one design for the group and vary the cap colour by site only if you genuinely need to tell them apart, because colourways that need their own screens count against the minimum separately. A better approach for multi-site groups is one cap, one logo, and the site distinction handled on the shirt or apron instead. Custom staff uniforms for restaurants and cafes covers the wider uniform, and custom trucker caps goes deeper on the mesh-back style. The restaurants and hospitality page is where to start a quote.
Settle one more thing early: who owns the cap. Venues that issue kit and take it back when somebody leaves order fewer pieces and spend time managing them. Venues that treat the cap as the staff member's own order more and manage nothing. Neither approach is wrong, but the choice changes the quantity, and it is easier made before the order than after a summer of turnover.
