The Upholstery Forum

Hi
Ive been doing residential upholstery but have recently advertised for commerical work such as restaurant booths, chairs etc. I would like to know how to quote for these. For example a standard removelable seat and back for a restaurant booth. Plain no top stitching.

Thanks
Margaret

I do my fair share of these and won’t give a price until I’m positive it was assembled conventionally and won’t add hours to the job because someone built it that doesn’t know how. This lesson was learned the hard way.

Basically for me it’s the materials cost plus markup and then I estimated my labour, you should have a pretty good idea how long it will take to mark one out, sew it together and staple it on by now? I do not break down my costs on the estimate, it’s just a final number. This stops the customer from trying to save $ by buying cheap materials on eBay or Amazon. If I don’t get the job I don’t lower my price and move on.

As a side note…. I always top stitch commercial work as I fell it makes it more robust and doesn’t take that long, but that just me.

I don't do these very often but I know that many of the people that do restaurant seating full time charge by liner foot and the price per foot changes depending on the type of booth and type of fabric.

I do the same as @Revv Up if they complain about the price I just move on.

Just to add, in my market your can get replacement from china cheaper than I can rewrap them, mainly because as mentioned by other if the booths are not easy to disassemble or access the labor cost goes up. I find that I mostly only do custom built booths, and not chain store booth. The chain store booths tend to be over screwed and a real pain to break down to get to the upholstery. You will also find that in chain store the table are permanently embedded in the floor and are usually in the way of braking down the booth.

@JimmieJoe Great advice! I hadn't considered that.

I work with a great domestic commercial furniture manufacturer that is located in the US. Everything is US made. You should check out their site or reach https://www.modernlinefurniture.com/.

@MattyH , why is that?