Types of Restaurant Towels
- Created: Friday, 31 July 2020 12:05
In the restaurant business, a fast-paced industry that's constantly changing and evolving, one thing seems to remain steadfast — you can never have too many towels. From cleaning up spills to sanitizing tables to drying dishes, restaurants go through tons of towels each day to maintain the tidiness of their business. As a critical component of cleanliness, restaurant dish towels are used daily by every member of a restaurant's staff, including servers, chefs and bartenders.
There are several different types of towels that can be used for different purposes. Looking through a restaurant towel service catalog can be quite overwhelming if you don't know what makes each kind of towel distinct. This article is designed to walk you through the various categories of wholesale restaurant towels and their uses, so you can make an informed choice to suit your restaurant's needs and get the best result possible from your towels.
Why Does Towel Type Matter?
Before discussing the different types of towels available, it's important to know why having different types of towels matters. Towels are an integral part of a restaurant's resources because they have the ability to keep the restaurant sanitary and in business. Disinfecting towels is the best way to keep a restaurant clean and guard against contaminants like bacteria. Although 48 million cases of foodborne illness occur each year, your restaurant doesn't have to be the cause of any if you use the right types of towels. To prevent an outbreak, make sure your restaurant staff avidly uses and disinfects towels during their shifts.
The function of a towel and the needs it must meet are slightly different for each staff member. Here is how a towel's purpose may vary across positions:
Chef
Nearly all chefs keep a towel on them to keep their hands dry, maintain a clean cooking area, mop up minor spills, clear their cutting board of runaway ingredient remnants and wipe away any smudges while plating. The towel is also a chef's best friend for handling hot items. For example, a chef can grab a towel to act as oven mitts to remove a dish from the oven, carry hot plates or pots around the kitchen or serve as a hot pad to set steaming pots on.
Bartender
Hardly anyone in the restaurant industry is more familiar with spills than a bartender. To soak up sticky substances, a bartender always needs at least one towel within arm's length at all times. Bartenders also handle drinks directly, meaning they must frequently wash and dry their hands. To make hand-drying as quick as possible and increase efficiency, a bar mop towel is the one highly absorbent tool that every bartender needs.
Server
It is critical that a spill in your restaurant's dining area is taken care of with as much speed as possible, which is only possible with a properly absorbent towel. Keeping a towel handy to clean up spills quickly and wipe down tables frequently will allow servers to maintain a safe environment by ensuring the restaurant is slip-free and hygienic. Also, a server may find towels helpful for protecting their hands when transferring hot dishes to tables.
Although the function of a towel may change depending on the circumstances and which member of a restaurant's crew is using it, the one constant is that it's always needed in the restaurant setting. Because there are so many distinct uses for a towel within a restaurant, specific types of towels have been developed to suit restaurant workers' precise needs.
7 Main Types of Towels
Here are the seven main types of towels that will be most relevant to you and your restaurant:
1. Restaurant Dish Towels
It is important for every restaurant to keep a separate set of towels reserved solely for drying dishes, so a towel that was used to scrub the bathroom sink in never used to wipe down a serving platter. Practicing such a strict dish towel only policy will prevent the spread of bacteria in your restaurant. For this reason, dish towels are your first line of defense in keeping your restaurant sanitary and protecting your guests from contracting any illnesses.
To best serve their purpose, you want your dish towels to be made of a substantial, absorbent material that is easily able to soak up all the excess liquid on a dish's surface. A fabric like cotton is often the best choice for a dish towel because its absorbency lends itself to getting dishes as dry as possible.
2. Washcloths
A washcloth is a small swath of material used primarily for wiping and washing items. Although made from material similar to that of a dish towel, washcloths are more petite and the type of towel you would usually soap up to get a piece of dishware or utensils sudsy before rinsing them off.
Because of this, washcloths are not intended to handle big jobs like swabbing down the whole oven. Instead, stick to using washcloths for cleansing smaller, more delicate surfaces that are sturdy enough to withstand some scrubbing, but don't require a hefty, heavy-duty towel.
3. Restaurant Kitchen Towels
The purpose of a restaurant kitchen towel might seem obvious, and it mostly is. Of course, every restaurant kitchen requires towels it can rely on to mop up any spills and keep cooking stations clean. But your towel buying decision becomes a bit more complicated once you discover that not all kitchen towels are created equally.
Kitchen towels are sold for both the restaurant and the average home kitchen. Naturally, a home kitchen does not demand the same level of durability from its towels, so it's important that you get kitchen towels manufactured specifically for restaurants. If you purchase kitchen towels that are explicitly for the restaurant business, you can know with confidence that your towels will be able to meet the intense demands that your restaurant kitchen will place on it.
If you're not sure whether the towels you're interested in purchasing are durable enough, order them through a trusted company that specializes in industrial level towels.
4. Grill Towels
They say, if you can't take the heat, then get out of the kitchen, and that is certainly true for restaurant kitchen towels. Although restaurant kitchen towels are excellent for meeting the most basic back-of-house towel needs, they are not cut out for cleaning the grill. While it is necessary to maintain the cleanliness of your restaurant's grill, it is equally as important to ensure safety by using the proper kind of equipment around such a hot surface.
To solve this issue, look no further than grill towels. Grill towels are made especially to withstand the heat of the grill while getting rid of excess oil, grime and pesky residue on your grill's surfaces. Use grill towels to scrub in between all the cracks and crevices of your restaurant's grill and other hot surfaces to keep your cooking appliances clean without burning up the kitchen towels.
5. Bar Towels
If your restaurant's bar area is like most, you see a lot of spills in one night. Because of this, bar towels are smaller and lighter than regular towels as well as extremely absorbent. As the item responsible for keeping the bar spotless and sparkling, bar towels must have the highest level of absorbency to accommodate all of the spills that will inevitably take place at the bar.
Despite their name, bar towels are also effective for wiping down counters and tabletops in addition to bar surfaces. Keep yourself out of sticky situations all over your restaurant by building up a stockpile of bar towels.
6. Utility Towels
These towels are incredibly tough and can withstand an immense amount of use while maintaining their hardy threads. Because of their nearly indestructible nature, utility towels are the perfect tool for washing off food stains from your sharpest kitchen knives and cutlery, taking care of stubborn grease spots on your stoves and other surfaces and protecting your bare hands while transporting hot pots and pans, along with many other uses.
The strength of utility towels is attributable to their oil-wicking abilities and high absorbency rates. These two qualities make utility towels your go-to option for scrubbing away sticky grime and remnants of food products, wiping down food preparation surfaces and drying workers' hands after they've washed them. The heavy-duty materials that utility towels are made from make them suitable for tough tasks like these and many more, meaning no kitchen is complete without some utility towels on hand.
7. Glass Towels
In stark contrast to utility towels, glass towels are created using much more delicate materials. As the name implies, glass towels are most commonly used for cleaning or drying the glass objects found in your restaurant. Although this necessarily makes them more dainty than utility towels, they are still highly absorbent while treating your restaurant's fragile dishes with tender care.
Glass towels were invented specially for cleaning and polishing glass serving items and cutlery, so they are lint-free to prevent any unwanted streaks, scratches or residue on your glassware. Because you want to be as gentle, yet thorough, as possible when handling any of your glass products, invest in stocking your restaurant with glass towels to preserve your most breakable objects.
Different Towel Features
Aside from the different types of restaurant towels on the market, different features, like the materials that towels are made out of, can have just as much of an impact on their effectiveness in keeping your restaurant sanitary and safe for guests. For example, some materials clean quicker, while others do a more thorough job.
Here are some tips for navigating the details when buying towels for your business:
Cotton Percentage
Cotton is an extremely absorbent material, so the higher the percentage of cotton in a towel, the more water it will take in. This makes it an excellent fabric for soaking up minor spills, but less than ideal for tackling tougher tasks, like scouring pots and pans with cooked-on residue.
Terry Towels
Terry towels can be extra beneficial to anyone in the restaurant world because they are typically made from 100% cotton. The way that terry towels are woven produces an absorbent towel that easily cleans up messes.
Premium Cotton
Although cotton is already a great material all on its own, you can take your restaurant's towel game up a notch by using premium cotton or premium plus towels. Monogrammed premium cotton towels can add that touch of pizzazz to your restaurant's front-of-house appearance that it's been missing.
Color-Coded
Buying towels in varying colors or with different colored stripes can help you follow a color-coded system of which towels are used for what, so towels used to clean the bathrooms are never used in the kitchen. Labeling certain colored towels for certain tasks or areas will help keep your restaurant as sanitary as possible.
Why You Should Order Towels in Bulk
Given the number of uses for towels and situations in which they are necessary, it is no surprise that restaurants consume a tremendous number of towels each day. Although some towels, such as glass towels, will not be used as strenuously and will not need to be replaced as often, the costs of continuously ordering towels can still add up. And with so many different categories of towels to keep track of for your inventory, keeping your restaurant's towel supply well-stocked can be stressful and time-consuming.
However, you can save both time and money by purchasing your restaurant's towels in bulk as opposed to placing lesser orders more frequently. Ordering wholesale kitchen towels will severely cut the price you pay per towel and spare you from the incessant cycle of ordering and re-ordering smaller batches of towels.
Another advantage of placing larger orders of towels at a time is increased cleanliness due to the ability to use fresh towels to maintain your restaurant's hygienic conditions while your used towels are being washed. Get your restaurant's dish towels in bulk to keep your kitchen running smoothly, and make ordering towels one less thing you have to worry about.
Buy Restaurant Towels in Bulk From Towel Super Center Today
Make buying towels in bulk the secret to your restaurant's efficiency by ordering from Towel Super Center today. With an array of restaurant towel products from bar mops to washcloths, Towel Super Center offers every type of towel you could need in a variety of sizes and color options.
At Towel Super Center, we understand that towels should not take up a major chunk of your restaurant's budget, so all of our towels are the highest quality and at the lowest price point. Don't let a lack of towels keep your restaurant from flourishing — browse Towel Super Center's products to find the best bulk order for you.
