How Cafes Buy Jackets & Outerwear Wholesale
By The Velocity Wear Team
A cafe with five staff still faces a fifty-piece minimum per design, so the question is not which jacket but how to make fifty of anything sensible. The usual answer is one shell that covers staff for several years, or a design a regular would happily buy. There is no list price for outerwear; each job is quoted from the spec.
How does a five-person cafe reach fifty pieces?
Three routes work. Buy once for several years and store the spares, which suits a cafe with settled branding and high staff turnover. Make the jacket a customer item as well as a staff one, which suits a cafe with a following. Or group with the other sites in a small chain and place one order between you. Sizes mix freely inside the fifty, so none of these costs more for being weighted oddly.
What does not work is ordering two variations that each fall short of fifty. The minimum counts per design, so the second variation is simply a second fifty.
What do baristas actually need outdoors?
Something for the opening shift and the bin run, not something for behind the bar. Near the machine a jacket is a hazard and a heat problem; the useful garment is the one worn at six in the morning unlocking the door, and by whoever is clearing the pavement tables in October. That points at a light softshell or a coach jacket, in a colour that survives milk splash and coffee grounds.
The rest of the kit — aprons, tees, caps — carries the day-to-day branding. Staff uniforms for restaurants and cafes sets out that list, and the restaurants and hospitality page covers the wider order.
How does outerwear sit with aprons and tees?
It carries the branding that has to be read from the street, so it is the one garment where the mark can be larger. An apron logo is seen across a counter; a jacket back is seen from the pavement. Keep the chest mark small and embroidered on the staff version, and put the bigger graphic on the back if the jacket doubles as something customers buy.
The four shells, and which decoration each takes, are listed on the wholesale jackets page. A larger hospitality operation faces different arithmetic, and how restaurants buy outerwear covers that end of it.
What does the timeline look like for a new cafe?
Making time is 10–15 working days from artwork approval, with delivery on top. An opening date rarely holds, but a jacket order cannot be sped up to match a slipping fit-out, so approve artwork early and let the kit wait in a box rather than the other way round. Taking a sample first costs £150 and comes back off the bulk invoice, which is worth doing when the shade has to sit next to a finished interior.
What should a cafe check before approving artwork?
That the logo works small and in one colour. Cafe branding is often drawn for a shopfront or a cup, with fine strokes and a light weight, and neither survives being embroidered at 70mm on a chest. Ask for the artwork to be reviewed at garment scale before approval, and redraw it once rather than reprinting later.
Check the placement against a real body too. A chest mark that sits well on a flat mockup can land under an apron strap in practice, which makes the branding invisible for most of a shift. Move it up or across until it clears whatever else the staff are wearing.
Confirm the thread or ink colour against something physical as well. A screen value and a stitched one rarely match, and a slightly-off brand colour shows up more on a plain shell than anywhere else.
