The first booths were built in Downtown Lancaster out of Philadelphia Fencing which was salvaged from the upper floors of the vacant building. I helped build these booths, which was one of my first jobs at Isaac's. When we relocated that restaurant out of 44 N Queen Street into the new Fulton Bank building, we brought one of the old booths with us. Here is what it looks like today:
We have a plaque on the booth that explains the history. Here is a close up of the plaque:
One of the unpleasant qualities of the Philadelphia Fencing boards was the propensity to make splinters. We had lots of customers rip nylons and slacks on the booths. It the worst situations, a big long dagger like-splinter would lift up, and a customer sliding into the booth would have a huge splinter impaled into their butt cheek. We spent many hours sanding and polyurethaning these seats to fix this problem.
The original booths were very tight. Over the years, we have increased the distance from the table top to the seat back. Theoretically, you could estimate the age of qan Isaac's restaurant by measuring this space. We called this enlargement "American-sizing" the booths.
We have several booths that are modified for wheel chairs by having the seat on the one side removed.
Isaac's in Ephrata had a few deuce sized booths, but they turned out to feel weird, and are no longer there. We also tried some six-top booths, but they also felt weird - somehow claustrophobic, and tough to serve.
Most of our restaurants have about 13 booths.
The latest innovation was to add padded seats. What do you think, should we add padded backs, as well? Our original theory was that uncomfortable booths were a good thing, because they encouraged customers not to hang around - we could turn tables faster. Now we seem to be all about customer comfort.
During construction of one of our newest locations, Paxton Street, we installed the booths on the back wall, and discovered to our horror, that the wall lights were located wrong - they were off center! We played around with them, and discovered that if we spun the lights a quarter turn and had them hanging off-kilter, they looked kind of neat, and your eye didn't notice they are off center. That's why Paxton Street's booth lights hang the way they do.
Booths often get re-used after we close a location. Strasburg has booths from our old Greenfield location, as well as Sheraton. Ephrata has booths from Sheraton.
So that's the official position on booths! The question remains: should we add padded booth backs?
2 comments:
No padded booth backs! It would double our upholstery cleaning costs!
PS--I once had an irate and generally mean customer at Downtown (she was a regular, so I knew that she was only more irate and mean this day than most)grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me into the bathroom to remove a splinter that had lodged in the back of her very upper thigh. I gracefully excused myself and got a manager. I mean, did she think that I kept tweezers and gloves in my apron? Further, I knew her to be a 35-cent tipper(this is no lie), and that is simply not enough for me to have any more contact with her than necessary.
--Emily
I personaaly liked the booth in the back of the old Isaac's that took up the entire corner. You could hold secret meetings, sleep, eat in peace. we used to stay in that booth forever and it had NO padding!
Jess
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