Caring for your Uniforms | Urbanbar Design

July 31, 2017 Amanda Cordner

Uniform Care: some tips for your team

There’s nothing quite like opening your delivery of uniforms that have been specially designed and ordered for your venue. With the planning and designing part over, your team finally gets to enjoy a fresh and professional style at work. But the novelty can soon wear thin if you don’t make an effort to keep your shirts and aprons perfectly laundered and cared for. Here, we set you up with all the tips you’ll need to keep your kit looking fresh for a long time.

Your Cleaning & Care Toolkit

If you’re an Urbanbar customer, you will have noticed that our product range features quality fabrications, whether for shirts, aprons or t-shirts. We use a lot of 100% cotton which is a classic uniform fabric for a great reason: it’s durable yet breathable, and it’s also fairly forgiving when it comes to stain removal.

Whatever happens in your kitchen, café or bar, you’ll want a selection of the following products at hand for regular cleaning and for more serious stain removal:

Gentle detergent: choose a washing detergent or powder that doesn’t’t have harsh bleach. Bleaches can damage the fibres in cotton and cause early discolouration of a garment. Extra points if you can find a detergent that’s eco-friendly as well as effective! With so many gentle, environmentally friendly detergents on the market, there’s no reason to be using so many harsh chemicals for everyday washing. Always follow your garment’s specific care instructions, which will be on the tag.

Stain removal: if you’re washing white shirts, you’ll want an extra boost to keep them from fading out to a dreaded shade of ‘off-white’. According to this review, your best choice for heavy-duty stain removal is the White King powder. For less intense stain removal, use basic laundry soap and hand wash in a basin.

Clothesline or Clotheshorse: over-drying your uniforms through regular use of a harsh dryer will cause faster damage than if you opted for air-drying. We recommend no tumble-drying for all our products: better for the garments, and the environment.

Finishing touches

Perfectly pressed: your uniforms should be ironed at a medium setting on your iron to prevent damage. You should always iron on the reverse side. If you have any custom embroidery or screen printing, iron on a low setting, or on reverse, and cover the embellishment with a handkerchief to prevent direct contact with the iron. At Urbanbar, we choose not to use products with potentially toxic ‘iron free’ finishes, so that the natural fibres we use are allowed to perform as nature intended.

Present with pride: great hospitality professionals are people who value their presentation and who take the extra care to make sure they present a great impression of their venue. When all team members take care to preserve, protect and proudly wear their uniforms, the rest is easy.