Calculate Your Linen Needs Like A Pro

Sometimes we forget that everyone doesn’t think about linen usage 24/7 like we do.  We even forget that some people may be inexperienced in linen usage.

We realized that some folks need help when calculating their linen usage needs.  Fortunately, we’ve been doing this a long time (92 years to be exact) so we’ve got you covered.  When calculating your specific linen rental needs, there are some pretty simple formulas to figure out your linen usage.  Plus, knowing how much product you need will help you to save money on your overall linen rental bill.
So, here’s our advice:

APRONS:
We’ll start with an easy one.  Figure out how many shifts you schedule in your kitchen per week.  If you have 50 shifts per week, you need 50 aprons.  Pretty straight forward, right?

NAPKINS:
These are easy too.  Your guest count per week will be a good indicator of the number of napkins you’ll need per week.  Your guest count per week will fluctuate based on the time of year so a take the average guest count and add 5% so you don’t need to call for special deliveries and pay additional fees.
TABLE LINENS:
Like napkins, your average table count per week is a good indicator.  Just add 5% and be proactive in requesting more if you know there’s a special event or holiday that will increase your table count.

KITCHEN TOWELS:
A good cook uses about 3-4 Kitchen Towels per shift.  Again, take your number of cook shifts per week and multiple by 4 and that’s how many Kitchen Towels your restaurant will need each week.

BAR TOWELS:
Your bar staff should use 5-6 bar towels per shift.  They get dirty and the last thing you want is a bar guest seeing a dirty towel wiping their glasses or the bar top. Take your number of bar staff shifts per week and multiple by 6 and that will give you the number of bar towels needed each week.

***Many restaurants also use towels to wipe down tables between guests so make sure you account for those as well.

MATS:

Mats are essential for customer safety (think wet floors from snow) and workers comp reduction.  Entrance mats and longer walkway mats are essential in customer safety.  From a employee standpoint, look to place a mat anywhere that a staff member is standing for an extended period of time.  There are a ton of mat options.

Hopefully this information will give you some insight on how much inventory you need each week.
Still confused?  Or just want us to look at your current inventory levels?  Reach out to us at  lineninfo@balfurd.com and we’re happy to help!