Polo Shirts for Restaurants, Ordered Properly
By The Velocity Wear Team
Restaurant polos have to survive heat, stains and a wash after every shift. A performance knit dries fastest and suits back of house; a cotton piqué looks better across a dining room and hides light marks in its texture. Polos start at $18 a piece at our 50-piece minimum, and sizes mix freely inside the 50.
What should front and back of house each wear?
Treat them as two different working environments, because they are. Back of house sits next to heat sources and moves constantly, so a performance knit that dries quickly is the practical answer. Front of house is judged on appearance, and a cotton piqué with a clean collar reads better across a dining room than a sports fabric.
Many restaurants use colour to separate the two rather than fabric, which is neat operationally but expensive at the order stage: each colourway that needs its own screens counts as a separate design and carries its own 50-piece minimum. If the budget is tight, one colour with different decoration placement is the cheaper way to signal the difference.
Which colours last in a hospitality environment?
Darker ones. A black, charcoal or deep navy polo will look presentable on a shift where a white one has already been sent for changing, and the textured surface of a piqué knit disguises light marks better than a flat knit. Reserve pale colours for roles that do not carry plates.
Order enough pieces per person that nobody is wearing yesterday's shirt. Three per front of house team member is a realistic working number for a site that washes daily, and it is usually what takes a small restaurant comfortably past the 50-piece minimum without any padding.
What does a restaurant polo order cost?
From $18 a piece at the 50-piece minimum, with the price falling by up to 35% as quantity rises across the tiers at 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500–999 and 1,000 plus. Embroidery is priced on stitch area, so a small chest logo is cheaper to run than a large one. A £150 sample, credited against the bulk order, lets you wash and wear one before the run is cut — worth doing on a garment this hard used.
The production window runs to 10 to 15 working days once artwork is approved, with delivery transit after it. Group sites open and rebrand to fixed dates, so build that window into the opening schedule. Our restaurants and hospitality page covers the wider uniform picture, and the polo shirts page lists the knits and collar options.
How do you handle staff turnover?
Order in a way that assumes it. Hospitality teams change, so a run sized exactly to today's rota is a run that runs out. Weight the order towards the middle sizes, keep a small reserve of each, and note that a top-up is a fresh run of 50 rather than a handful of pieces — which is the single most useful thing to know before you decide the first quantity.
For sites that also run events, pop-ups or a catering arm, the crew kit for those has a different rhythm again, set out in our notes on event polo orders. If you are still choosing between knits and collar styles, the buyer's guide goes through the options.
Write down who holds the stock and how a shirt gets issued. In a restaurant that detail decides whether the reserve lasts a year or disappears in three months. A named manager, a locked cupboard and a note of what went out is enough — it does not need a system, it needs someone whose job it is.
Decide the wash policy at the same time. If staff take shirts home, print the care instruction clearly and accept that hot washes will happen. If the site launders centrally, you can be more demanding about the fabric and the shirts will last longer. Either is workable; what causes problems is not choosing.
