Rooftop restaurant furniture procurement starts at the freight elevator

Everything that sits on a rooftop first had to be carried there. That sounds obvious until a pallet of chairs is waiting on the loading dock at 7 AM and nobody has asked how the last flight of stairs works.

Buyers call this job procurement. On a roof it comes down to elevators. What follows is a buying brief for the journey, in the order the furniture takes it: the route, the weight, the calendar, the first storm, the dock and the building's own rules. It isn't engineering advice, and it won't tell you how much wind a roof can take. It will help you buy pieces that arrive in good order and reach the roof in one trip, or at least a known number of them.

Walk the route backward from the roof

Start where the guests will sit and walk toward the street: roof door, stairs or elevator, hallway, loading dock or curb. At every stop write down the width, the height and the turns, and count the steps, because the driver's job ends at the truck and a flight of stairs is not part of it.

Standard freight service puts a palletized load on a dock or a tailgate. Moving it inside belongs to your crew, and so do unpacking, assembly and hauling away the cartons. A liftgate or inside delivery can be added, booked when you place the order and charged extra. The freight quote is built address by address.

Ask the one question a floor plan never answers: does the elevator reach the roof, or does the last flight run on stairs? A truck that waits on a booked elevator can pick up detention charges, passed through at the carrier's rate. Our freight accessorial costs piece lists those extras in detail.

Weigh what goes up

A rooftop of 10 tables seating four needs 40 chairs, 10 table bases and, say, 5 umbrellas. Take a metal mesh armchair at 12 pounds, an aluminum table base at 20, a 7.5-foot umbrella at 19, and an umbrella base with casters at 75.

The chairs come to 480 pounds. The table bases add 200. The umbrellas add 95, and their bases add 375, which is more than three quarters of the weight of all 40 chairs. The total is 1,150 pounds before a single tabletop goes on the cart. The surprise is the umbrella bases, which weigh more together than they look apart.

Now read the rating on the placard inside the freight elevator. Say it shows 1,500 pounds and the cart plus the person pushing it weigh 300 together. A trip then carries 1,200 pounds. The 1,150 above fits with 50 to spare, and tabletops will not fit in 50, so plan on a second trip and write both into the delivery day.

Count back from opening day

Say the roof opens on Friday, May 14. Count weekdays backward and ignore holidays. Five days for setup and a dry run takes you to May 7. Five more for freight transit, which is an estimate from your quote and never a promise, takes you to April 30. Then 21 business days of lead time lands on Thursday, April 1. A standard order wants to be confirmed by about then, and the review and the payment instructions need a few days before that.

Custom pieces run longer. Up to about eight weeks is 40 business days, which pushes the same count back to Friday, March 5. Custom lines ask for 40 percent down, with the rest due before the truck rolls, and once a custom line is confirmed it stays: no cancelling, no returns. Our piece on the ordering timeline lays the whole calendar out.

Big orders may split into separate loads. Every load gets the same dock-side count, so two loads mean two mornings of staff.

Plan the storm drill before the first storm

At some point a dark cloud will cross the roof while the tables are full. Decide now where everything goes. Chairs that stack travel by the stack: 40 chairs four high is 10 stacks, and at 12 pounds a chair each stack weighs 48. Two people carrying one stack apiece make five trips each. Umbrellas come down first, and a base on casters can be rolled by one person where a bare base has to be lifted.

Write the drill on a card and hang it by the roof door: how many stacks, where they sleep, who takes which. Whether the building lets furniture stay on the roof overnight is a question for the property manager, so ask it before you count on it.

Count at the dock, not on the roof

The rule of thumb for a roof: nothing goes in the elevator until it has been counted on the dock. Check each pallet and carton against the bill of lading, look at every one, and write each damaged or missing carton on the bill before the driver leaves. If a full check is not possible, sign it subject to inspection. Photograph anything crushed, and keep the packaging until a claim is settled.

The mistake is carrying it all up first. Damage found on the roof, a long way from the truck, is hard to pin on the carrier. Concealed damage has to be reported within 24 hours, and shortages or defects in writing within three days. Schedule enough hands to unload within about 30 minutes of the truck arriving, and we help prepare the carrier claim. The delivery page has the full receiving steps.

The roof has its own rules

Draw the roof as it really is. Mark the stair housing, the vents, the drains and the mechanical units, then measure the floor that remains. Say a 30-inch table gets a 25-inch-deep armchair on each side, tucked 4 inches under the top. That is 72 inches across, and a 36-inch service lane beside it makes 108, or 9 feet. A strip of roof narrower than 9 feet is a place for planters, not tables.

A roof belongs to the building. Before you choose any piece, ask the property manager what may sit on the roof surface, whether anything has to be secured, and what the building says about umbrellas. Ask about glides and feet at the same time, because the surface decides what your chair feet should be.

The weights on our product pages are exact figures. What your roof's gusts do with them is a different matter, and it belongs to the building's engineer, not to a catalog and not to us. Our wind exposure piece keeps to what furniture can and can't do. For a first pass at the mix, browse stacking chairs, patio tables and patio umbrellas, and the cafe collection if the roof is small.

Send the roof's numbers with the order

Gather the answers before you write: the dock or curb, the elevator rating and size, how many flights of stairs remain, and the days the building lets a truck in. Then email sales@restaurantfurniture.store with a subject line that starts with FREIGHT and the project name. Freight cost, extra services, scheduling and multi-site questions all route there, and a person answers within one business day.

Save the pieces you are weighing in a patio plan, with the weights in the notes and the elevator rating at the top. The plan sheet downloads, so the building manager can see the same numbers you do. Then go and stand in the freight elevator with a tape measure.