cafeteria seating design Archives - Carroll Seating Company

Published: 12 December 2013

Written by Carroll Seating

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Categories: School seating

School cafeterias haven’t always been pleasant places. From second rate food to uncomfortable seating choices, just the mere word cafeteria invokes all sorts of problem memories for most people. The world is changing fast, though, and with it, the school cafeteria is shifting too. Could yours actually be inviting? Absolutely, and these simple changes could help.

Cut Down On “Mass” Anything

From eliminating a single lunch choice for students to dumping the long tables where every single kid has to sit together day after day, get rid of the idea that cafeteria time at your school has to involve a singular, drone-like experience. Imagine going to your favorite fast food restaurant, standing in a very long line to receive a tray of food that looked just like every other patron’s, then being forced to sit next to every other person dining in the restaurant. You wouldn’t stay long, would you? As you redesign your school cafeteria, try to make it mimic the experience you might want while you’re eating. Put a couple of cashier stations out there. Add personal tables, booths, and other seating areas to give the students a chance to socialize with their friends.

Spice Things Up

One look at any school cafeteria menu, and you’ll see that things have changed over the last few decades. With choices like fajitas, pepperoni pizza, and even meatball subs. If a menu can have lots of dishes to please a variety of palates, can’t your décor be just as pleasing? Add student artwork to the picture. Throw in some creative portraits of your mascots. Choose a theme and throw in some 3D artwork to help really add to the feel of the cafeteria.

Don’t Overlook the Details

Sometimes it’s the tiny details that can change a cafeteria environment for the better. A new flooring choice may brighten things up. Helpful condiment stations may give students better access to what they need during a lunch period. Simple choices like planters can help divide up student seating and create a calmer atmosphere.

You want lunch time to be just as productive for your students as class time, and a few simple changes like these can help.

Published: 5 November 2013

Written by Carroll Seating

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Categories: Seating Solutions

Sitting down in the cafeteria isn’t always the best experience. It’s just not part of human nature to want to sit in an industrial environment to eat, whether with friends or on your own. Fortunately, there are a number of great ways to change that feeling, and innovative seating choices from Palmer Hamilton can help.

Table Styles

One of the most important choices you’ll make is getting the right table style, and that will depend heavily on the use of the cafeteria space outside of serving food. If it’s only a food service facility, you have lots of amazing options. From fiberglass or upholstered cafeteria booths to freestanding tables and amazing circular booths that will truly change the way people look at the cafeteria, your options are virtually limitless in that department. You can give any cafeteria a café style feel in a hurry.

If you need mobile style seating options, you may be a bit more limited, but you don’t have to stick with wall pocket systems if you have the right storage space. Instead, you can go with shaped or elongated tables as well as chair or bench style seating. What’s more, though, is that you can choose a number of laminate surfaces that may even include customized graphics to help change the atmosphere of your lunchroom.

Making the Most of Your Space

The key with any seating choice you make is to ensure you’ve better filled your space. It can be tough to even know where to begin, but we can help with customized floor plan services that will ensure you consider every aspect of your space.

No matter what concerns you may have about your cafeteria, let us help you solve them. Cafeteria seating is our specialty, and we’ll not only help you design the ideal environment, but also help open up your options when it comes to the ideal seating choices. Contact us today for more information on Palmer Hamilton cafeteria seating solutions.

Published: 30 April 2013

Written by Carroll Seating

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Categories: Seating Solutions

School cafeterias are unique places these days. You have to ensure a solid traffic flow so students can get through the serving area in time to eat, but you also want to make it an inviting place for every student. The standard industrial look just doesn’t do it these days. Our work with Plaza Middle School was an excellent proving ground for us. After all, there are no tougher critics than twelve and thirteen year old kids.

What We Did
We were asked to come in and provide every inch of the design work. For us, this meant creating a cafeteria seating layout that worked for students and staff, coordinating existing food service equipment into a layout that breathed efficiency, and looking at things from a “that’s cool” standpoint so students would really love the new lunchroom.

On that front, we created a custom laminated focal wall behind the service line itself, came up with an amazing railing system for the kids to line up at, developed custom logo graphic tables, and added durable custom artwork pieces throughout. The crowning jewel, though, was the eye catching school logo’s Tiger Eyes soffit that is actually backlit to make the eyes pop out at students.

The Results
Students and staff alike love the new space. It’s an environment students actually want to be a part of. We managed to combine their mascot and important themes to the school to help amp up student pride a bit, and because we used school colors throughout, it helped to personalize the space.

The lunch hour is one of the only times each day students can easily interact with friends, and that’s an essential life skill too, so we created intimate small group sections and booth seating for students to help invite students in. The booths and clustered seating area give it that fast-food feel students are so accustomed to, and we managed to meet all of the ADA seating guidelines in the process of our design work.

Middle school kids are tough critics, so we were nothing short of surprised at all of the positive feedback we got with this project. Now if our own kids would only think we were that cool.