Wholesale Corporate Uniforms for Restaurants
By The Velocity Wear Team
A restaurant uniform order splits before it starts: front of house is judged on how it looks across a dining room, back of house on whether it survives heat, oil and a commercial wash. Both run from fifty pieces per design, from $20 a piece for corporate uniforms and $18 for polos, with aprons and outer layers in the same programme.
What does front of house need that the kitchen does not?
Consistency at a distance. A guest reads the room before they read a name badge, so front of house garments need to be the same colour, the same cut and the same level of crispness on everyone, including the person who started last week. That argues for ordering deeper in fewer designs so the cupboard can always produce a matching set.
Back of house needs the opposite priority. Nobody is assessing the cut of a chef's layer, but it has to cope with heat, splashes and a wash cycle that is harsher than anything a shirt sees at home. Aprons take most of that punishment, which is why they are worth ordering in greater depth than the garments underneath them.
Which fabrics survive heat and stains?
Mid and darker tones hide the marks that hospitality generates, and a fabric with some weight holds its shape through repeated hot washing better than a thin one. Where a garment will be washed daily, put the branding in stitch: embroidery on a chest position outlasts a surface print on anything that spends its life near a fryer.
Pale shirts are not off the table, but they are a commitment to replacing garments more often. If the room calls for them, order deeper so there is always a clean set, and build the replacement cycle into the budget rather than treating it as a surprise. The restaurants and hospitality page covers the full range we supply.
How many sets per person should you order?
Three per person is the working figure most operators land on: one on, one in the wash, one in the cupboard. With the fifty-piece minimum per design, a team of twelve is already close to that without any stretching, and the remainder covers starters and the garment that gets ruined in month two.
That arithmetic is the argument for ordering the fifty in one design rather than splitting it across three. Our wholesale uniforms page lists what runs as a single programme, and the depth you buy in the core garment is what keeps the floor looking consistent on a busy Saturday.
What does the order cost a small restaurant group?
At the minimum, corporate uniforms start at $20 a piece and polos at $18, with sizes mixed freely inside the fifty. A group running several sites usually crosses into a better tier without trying, since the tiers run 50–99, 100–249, 250–499, 500–999 and 1,000 upwards with up to 35% off the fifty-piece price at the deepest end.
One order across three sites beats three orders of fifty in both price and consistency, provided the design is the same. If you are working out what the whole front of house package should contain, custom staff uniforms for restaurants and cafes is a useful companion to this.
Decide who launders the kit before you decide how much of it to buy. Uniform washed on site goes through a hotter, harsher cycle than anything done at home, and it comes back faster, which means fewer sets per person will cover the rota. Kit taken home by staff needs more depth, because it returns on a timetable you do not control and a member of the team without a clean shirt is a member of the team in their own clothes. Neither arrangement is wrong, but they produce different order quantities and it is cheaper to know which one you are running first.
