Blog posts from June, 2015

In my quest to find good content to share on our social media pages, I inevitably stumble across other articles that I either don’t get around to sharing (there’s just so much good content out there!) or want to make sure the articles are shared through another medium (i.e. blog instead of social media) to ensure the articles get read by the most readers possible. Here are a number of articles relevant to Party Rental and Event Rental companies.

Tents are an expensive investment as many of you very well know. Making sure the cleaning solution you use is suitable for your tent, will ensure you’re not harming your investment. Check out this article for best practices in tent cleaning.

What happens when a ‘one of a kind’ accident happens to your business? If you rent dunk tanks, this article is a ‘what not to do’. Read on to hear how a rental company can protect themselves from the unexpected.

Picture source: intentsmag.com

Backyard events are more popular than ever thanks to the innovations in tenting. Here are the best tents and hottest trends to offer customers for backyard events.

There comes a time in a rental product’s life where it comes time to retire. But with storage space tight as it is, what do you do with rental products once they’ve reached their end of life? Check out this article for unique and creative ways to dispose of rental inventory.

Photo source: popsugar.com

Are there any rental items you’ve seen or customers have requested so much that you’re just over them? Here are 5 wedding trends that wedding planners are just dying to retire.

A good article to share with any DIY wedding customers as a nice value-add to help them out. This article includes 30 unexpected wedding costs that brides almost always forget to budget for. It’s got a wealth of information that is sure to help even the most organized of brides.

Another good article to share with any wedding customers or other outdoor event customers. This article provides tips on how to weather proof outdoor wedding décor or how to plan a plan b.

Restaurants, party rentals and banquet halls rely on glass racks to organize, wash, dry, store and transport glass stemware and other glassware. They come in a variety of compartment sizes from 9 compartments to 49 compartments per rack and can be open sided (i.e. have holes in the sides) or closed sided (i.e. no holes). If you’ve already been buying glass racks then this post isn’t really for you – unless you’re not happy with your current supplier. If you’re in the market to purchase glass racks, one of the most common things ask is where to buy glass racks in Canada?

This post will round up 4 other suppliers besides National Event Supply, who also sell glass racks in Canada.

1. s.t.o.p. Restaurant Supply

s.t.o.p. Restaurant Supply is located in Kitchener, Ontario and Sudbury, Ontario and caters to both commercial and retail customers. While Nella Cutlery and Hamilton Store Fixtures sell larger food equipment, s.t.o.p. restaurant supply focuses on smallwares, apparel & household items. S.t.o.p sells open sided glass racks in two sizes.

2. Nella

Synonymous with restaurant supply in Toronto, Nella Cutlery has two locations serving the greater Toronto Area with food equipment, refrigeration, bar equipment, material handling & storage, espresso machines, smallwares and knives with knife service. Nella sells closed sided glass racks in a variety of sizes and colours.

3. Brama Inc

Brama is located in Vaughan Ontario and features over 40,000 products in categories such as refrigeration, cooking, hold & warm, food prep, concession, ware wash, kitchen ware, dining ware and outdoor ware. Brama sells closed sided glass racks in a variety of sizes and colours.

4. Hendrix

Based in Brockville, Ontario with 10 locations across Canada, Hendrix Restaurant Equipment and Supply sells foodservice equipment, food prep, smallwares, chef knives, tabletop & serving, worktables & shelving, sinks & plumbing, furniture & fixtures, storage & transport, cleaning supplies, textiles & apparel both in their brick and mortar locations as well as online. Hendrix sells both open and closed sided glass racks in a variety of sizes and colours.

We sell catering glassware boxes and are currently expecting to begin selling closed-sided glass racks (like Cambro) at the end of July.

Hopefully one of these companies (if not us!) can help you find the glass racks you need.

An interesting discussion popped up on the internet recently about the ownership of recipes. Most often in restaurants, the head chef is tasked to create the recipes for the menu. The question raised in the discussion was: when a chef creates a recipe at a restaurant, who does it belong to? Who has the rights to it?

In the business world, a software engineer is paid by their company to create something that belongs to the company since the person was paid to produce it. So what does it mean in the restaurant world?

If we look at copyright laws, the courts have ruled that in general recipes cannot be protected by copyright law. The courts have ruled that “the identification of ingredients necessary for the preparation of each dish is a statement of facts.” And also that the directions were not protected by copyright because copyrights do not extend to procedures, processes or systems (source: Paleo Magazine). What can be copyrighted though is any descriptive text associated with the recipe, including illustration or pictures (Source: US Copyright Office), which is how cookbooks can be produced using recipes that have been altered from other chefs.

Therefore, in terms of the law, a chef has no rights to copyright a recipe – but neither does the restaurant. The best advice I’m able to find that protects both the restaurant and the chef is to build in non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements into employment contracts. This ensures that both parties have an understanding of what they can and can’t do – such as if a chef leaves a restaurant perhaps it’s built into the non-compete that his/her signature dishes are taken off the menu – or it’s built into the non-compete that a restaurant gets to keep a chef’s signature dishes and the chef cannot take the recipe with him/her. Another thing for all to consider, it’s not the recipe that makes the food so brilliantly, it’s the chef. So while a recipe may stay at a former restaurant, the chef has every opportunity to create something equally brilliant if not more so. And if a recipe leaves with the chef the new executive chef at the restaurant will create something equally brilliant if not more so to replace the former recipe.

Wedding Chair Covers are a god-send to banquet halls and party rental companies – not only do they help a bride dress up their ceremony or reception but they help banquet halls and party rental companies protect their investment on their banquet chairs. But there’s more than one kind of basic banquet chair cover and with limited budgets, there often is a choice to make between one kind of banquet chair cover versus the other. This blog post will list the pros / cons of polyester chair covers vs spandex chair covers so you can determine the best wedding chair cover to purchase for your venue or business.

Polyester Chair Covers

Pros:

• Traditional silhouette
• Easily decorated with sashes and florals
• Machine washable
• Draped look
• Less expensive than spandex chair covers
• Guests can put their purses under the chair without it showing to others
• Easy to put on

Cons:

• Needs to be immediately removed from the dryer or steamed / ironed
• Only fits a rounded back banquet chair

Spandex Chair Covers

Pros:

• Modern silhouette
• Easily decorated with sashes or florals
• Machine Washable
• No need for steaming or ironing (wrinkle free)

Cons:

• More expensive than polyester chair covers
• Takes longer to put on the chair due to the material
• Only fits a rounded banquet chair

Hopefully this helps you figure out which chair cover best suits your venue or company!

Over the past few weeks we have been getting asked a lot by our Customers on what are the dimensions of our Chiavari chairs, how big is a stack of Chiavari chairs and how much space will they need to store 200 Chiavari chairs.

To determine your storage requirements there are a few key measurements that are needed to help with any calculation you will need to do.

1. What are the dimensions of a single (1) Resin Chiavari chair?

Our Resin Chiavari chairs and our Crystal Chiavari chairs each have pretty much the same basic measurement for the chair. That is, the chair is (approximately) 36” tall x 16” wide x 16” deep and the chair seat is about 17½” high at the front of the seat. Our wood Chiavari chairs are close to the same dimensions except they are about 17” wide (at the widest point).

2. What happens to these dimensions each time you stack a chair?

Each time a chair is stacked on top of another resin Chiavari chair it adds 8” to the height. So a stack of 6 chairs would reach a height of about 76” (formula: 36” + (5 chairs x 8” of additional height). A stack of 8 chairs would be 92” (formula: 36” + (7 chairs x 8”)). Interestingly, a stack of 8 of our Crystal Chiavari chairs reaches a height of 94” so each chair must be a fraction taller than our Resin Chiavari chairs.

In addition, because the seat of Chiavari chairs have a slight slope to them, a stack of 6 chairs actually has a slight bend to it causing the space requirements to increase slightly, resulting in a depth of about 22” for a stack of 6 chairs.

3. And finally, what happens when you pack a bunch of chairs into a storage area?

The area we decided to mock up as Chiavari Chair Storage Space is 9 ft 3 inches wide by 16 feet long x 107 inches high (photo below)

As you can see from the stacks of chairs we placed into the front lobby of our offices, the profile of the chairs resulted in 4 stacks of 8 Chiavari chairs (32 chairs total) taking up a space that was about 6ft wide x 2ft deep x 8ft high.

At 6 rows of 4 stacks of Chiavari chairs, the storage space footprint was 6ft wide x 12ft deep for a total of 192 Chiavari chairs;

To result in 200 chairs stored, only 1 more stack of 8 Chiavari chairs is required. The total storage space is 14ft long x 6ft wide x 8ft high.

4. In the event you need to increase/optimize the number of Chiavari chairs you store in a confined area, it is possible to place the top Chiavari chair upside down.

Doing so would result in the stack of chairs growing by an additional 2 inches in height and 4 inches in depth (due to the angle the back of the seat is inclined at).

To avoid damage to the chairs, we decided to leave the storage covers on the Chiavari chairs and not to have any cushions on the chairs. It is possible to leave the cushions on the chairs which of course would result in taller stack of chairs, but this leaves a greater chance of damages occurring to the cushions due to the weight of the chair stack during periods when the chairs are not in use.