June 2026

Linen Par Stock Calculator — Hotels, Restaurants & Care Homes

Enter your rooms, covers or residents and get an instant par stock recommendation for every linen item — based on your changeover frequency and laundry turnaround time.

What Is Linen Par Stock?

Par stock is the minimum quantity of linen you need on hand at any time to run your operation without running out. The word “par” comes from golf — it’s the standard you need to meet to keep the game moving. In laundry terms, it means having enough clean linen to cover what’s in use, what’s in the wash, and a safety buffer for the unexpected.

The standard industry formula is 3× par for hotels: one set on the beds, one set in the laundry, one set in the linen room. In practice, your par level depends on three variables:

• How often you change linen — daily changeover needs more stock than a stay-over policy
• Your laundry turnaround time — a 48-hour turnaround means you need a larger float than a 24-hour service
• Your occupancy pattern — 100% occupancy at weekends with a slow midweek can create dangerous stock shortfalls

Par Stock by Property Type

Hotels and B&Bs

For a standard hotel with daily changeover and a 48-hour laundry turnaround, a 3.75× par gives you a comfortable operating buffer. This means a 50-room hotel needs roughly 190 duvet covers, 380 pillowcases, 375 bath towels and so on. The calculator above gives you exact figures by item.

High-occupancy periods (bank holidays, events, summer season) are where stock shortfalls occur. Add a 15–20% buffer on your base par calculation for these periods, or negotiate a temporary stock increase with your linen hire provider.

Restaurants and Pubs

Restaurant par stock is calculated per service, not per day. A 60-cover restaurant running two services a day needs enough tablecloths and napkins for both services, plus what’s in the wash, plus a reserve. The calculator assumes 2.5 covers per table — adjust if your tables seat differently.

The most common mistake in restaurant linen management is treating tablecloths and napkins as a single pool. They have different turnaround times (napkins wash faster) and different staining rates. Track them separately.

Care Homes

Care home linen has stricter hygiene requirements than hospitality. All linen should be processed to HTM 01-04 thermal disinfection standards — which means wash temperatures of 65°C for 10 minutes or 71°C for 3 minutes. Standard in-house machines rarely maintain these temperatures consistently. Resident personal linen should be clearly labelled and processed separately from communal items.

In-House vs Linen Hire: What Par Stock Costs You

When you own your linen stock, you bear the full cost of purchasing to par level, then replacing items as they wear out. For a 50-room hotel at 3.75× par, the initial stock investment alone runs to £8,000–£18,000 depending on quality — before you add laundering, equipment, staff time and ongoing replacements.

With a linen hire service, CanDo owns the stock and you pay a per-use fee. Your opening stock is delivered to par level at no upfront cost. Worn or damaged items are replaced by us. You never have a capital line item for linen again.

Read our full breakdown: Restaurant laundry in-house vs outsourcing — the real cost.

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June 2026

Restaurant Laundry: In-House vs Outsourcing — The Real Cost for UK Restaurants

Most restaurants underestimate what their laundry actually costs. This guide breaks down every in-house expense — equipment, energy, staff time, replacements — and compares it honestly against a managed restaurant laundry service.

Every restaurant has a laundry problem. Tablecloths stained with red wine. Napkins that go in clean and come back grey. Chef whites that need to be food-safe, not just “clean enough.” Glass cloths that leave smears. And somewhere in the building, a washing machine running constantly while your kitchen porter tries to keep up with the pile.

The question most restaurant owners ask at some point is: would outsourcing our laundry actually save money? The honest answer is almost always yes — but not always for the reason you expect. This guide gives you the full picture, with real cost figures, so you can make the decision properly.

What Does “Restaurant Laundry” Actually Cover?

Before comparing costs, it’s worth being precise about what’s involved. A typical restaurant laundry operation includes several distinct item categories, each with different wash requirements, turnaround times and replacement rates.

The In-House vs Outsourcing Cost Comparison

The following breakdown is based on a 60-cover restaurant running five services per week — a realistic mid-size independent. Costs are UK figures for 2025–2026. Your numbers will vary based on covers, service frequency and existing equipment, but the proportions hold across most restaurant sizes.

In-House Laundry: Full Cost Breakdown

Cost Category	Detail	Monthly Cost
Equipment (amortised)	Commercial washer (£3,000–6,000), dryer (£2,000–4,000), ironing press (£800–2,500) — amortised over 5 years plus annual servicing	£120–220
Energy — electricity	Commercial washer: 2–3kWh per cycle at 28p/kWh. 3–4 cycles/day, 6 days/week	£90–140
Energy — water & drainage	50–80 litres per wash cycle. Commercial water rates apply for most restaurant premises	£30–55
Detergents & chemicals	Commercial detergent, stain pre-treatment, fabric softener, descaler. Bought in bulk but still significant	£55–90
Staff time	Loading, unloading, ironing, folding, storing. Typically 45–75 mins/day at NLW (£12.21/hr from Apr 2025). Often done by kitchen porter or waiting staff	£195–330
Linen replacement	Tablecloths last ~200 washes before replacement. Napkins: ~300 washes. At 3–4 cycles/week, replacement budget adds up fast. Plus damage from incorrect wash temps	£120–200
Space cost	Laundry room or utility area: typically 4–8m² in a restaurant. At London/urban commercial rent rates of £400–800/m²/year this is rarely costed — but it’s real	£130–530
Management time	Ordering replacements, supervising quality, dealing with equipment breakdowns, scheduling laundry around service times. Often absorbed silently by the GM or head chef	£60–120
Total (excl. space)	Without space opportunity cost factored in	£670–1,155/mo
Total (incl. space)	Full economic cost including space at commercial rates	£800–1,685/mo

Outsourced Restaurant Laundry Service: What You Actually Pay

Item	Typical Volume (60 covers, 5 services/wk)	Indicative Monthly Cost
Tablecloths (hire & laundry)	60 covers × 5 services = 300 tablecloth uses/week. Par stock owned by provider.	£160–280
Napkins (hire & laundry)	2–3 napkins per cover per service = 600–900 uses/week	£80–160
Chef whites & uniforms	Kitchen team of 6–8, 2 sets each, weekly collection	£60–110
Glass cloths & bar towels	30–40 per service × 5 services/week	£40–80
Aprons & kitchen cloths	FOH and kitchen aprons, kitchen cloths in separate healthcare-style stream	£35–65
Collection & delivery	Typically included in contract. No per-trip charge on scheduled routes.	£0
Linen replacement	Covered by the hire contract. You don’t own the stock — worn items are replaced by the provider.	£0
Total	Full managed service including hire, laundry, collection, delivery and replacement	£375–695/mo

Side-by-Side Summary

What About Food Hygiene Compliance?

This is the area most in-house laundry operations get wrong — and the area that can cause the most serious problems at inspection.

Chef whites and kitchen cloths are food-contact textiles. Under UK food hygiene law (Regulation EC 852/2004, retained in UK law post-Brexit), businesses must control biological hazards from all surfaces and materials that come into contact with food — including the clothing worn during food preparation.

The key requirement is wash temperature. To achieve a 6-log reduction in common food-contact pathogens (Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria), textiles need to be washed at 60°C for a minimum of 10 minutes, or at 71°C for 3 minutes. Many light commercial washers and almost all domestic machines struggle to hold these temperatures consistently throughout the cycle — they heat the water but don’t maintain it.

A reputable restaurant laundry service processes all food-contact textiles to EN 14065 — the European standard for laundry processed textiles and their biocontamination control. This gives you documented evidence of compliant processing, which is increasingly expected by EHOs during inspections.

The Hidden Cost: Staff Time

The cost comparison above puts staff time at £195–330/month. In practice, the impact is often larger — because laundry is rarely done by someone hired for it. It’s absorbed into the working day of your kitchen porter, your most junior waiting staff, or — worst of all — your head chef or GM.

In a 60-cover restaurant running five services a week, laundry typically takes:

45–60 minutes per day — loading, unloading, moving wet linen to the dryer, ironing tablecloths, folding napkins, hanging uniforms. More if anything needs pre-treating or re-washing.

That’s roughly 20–25 hours per month of someone’s working time. At kitchen porter rates (£11–13/hour including employer NI and pension), the labour cost alone is £220–325/month. But the real cost is what that person could be doing instead: prep, service support, cleaning — everything that makes a restaurant run.

What to Look for in a Restaurant Laundry Service

Not all commercial laundry providers are set up for restaurant work. When evaluating a restaurant laundry service, there are six things worth checking specifically:

1. Turnaround time

A restaurant needs its linen back quickly. If you run lunch and dinner service six days a week, you cannot wait three days for a collection and return. Look for providers offering 24–48 hour turnaround on scheduled routes, with flexibility for event and banquet work.

2. Separate processing streams

Food-contact textiles (chef whites, kitchen cloths, aprons) should be processed separately from front-of-house linen (tablecloths, napkins). Cross-contamination between streams is a hygiene risk. Ask your provider how they segregate loads.

3. EN 14065 certification

This is the benchmark for biocontamination control in commercial laundry. Not all providers hold it. If you serve food or operate a kitchen, it is worth asking for — and a good provider will be able to show you the documentation without hesitation.

4. Stain and damage policy

Red wine on a tablecloth, candle wax on a napkin, grease on a chef’s jacket — find out what the provider’s policy is before you sign. Most commercial laundry providers will re-treat and re-wash at no extra cost. Items that are genuinely beyond recovery should be replaced under a linen hire contract.

5. Minimum contract terms

Some providers require 12–24 month contracts. Others offer rolling monthly terms. For a restaurant with seasonal variation — summer terrace trade, Christmas bookings, slow January — flexibility matters. Ask whether you can scale volume up and down within the contract.

6. Collection and delivery reliability

This is the one that causes the most day-to-day pain when it goes wrong. A restaurant that runs out of clean tablecloths an hour before service has a real problem. Ask for references, ask about missed collections, and find out what the contingency is if something goes wrong on their side.

How CanDo’s Restaurant Laundry Service Works

CanDo provides a fully managed restaurant laundry service for restaurants, pubs, hotels and catering businesses across Wales and the Midlands. Here is how the process works:

1. We assess your volumes. We come to you (or do it remotely) and work out exactly what you need: covers, services per week, item types, any specialist requirements. No assumptions, no averages.

2. We set your par stock. If you take a linen hire contract, we deliver your full opening stock — typically 3× your weekly requirement so you always have clean linen available even if a delivery is delayed. If you supply your own linen, we just collect and return.

3. Scheduled collections. We collect on a fixed schedule — same days, same time window. Your team knows when to expect us. Soiled linen goes out, clean linen comes back. No surprises.

4. Processing to standard. All front-of-house linen is washed, finished and quality-checked. Chef whites and kitchen cloths go through our food-safe stream — correct temperatures, documented. Everything is returned pressed, folded and ready for service.

5. One invoice. Collection, processing, delivery, linen hire if applicable — all on one monthly invoice. No equipment bills, no detergent orders, no replacement linen budget.

Frequently Asked Questions — Restaurant Laundry Services

Is Outsourcing Right for Your Restaurant?

The cost comparison makes a strong case for outsourcing in most scenarios. But it is not the right answer for every restaurant. Here is a straightforward decision guide:

Outsourcing is likely the better choice if: you run more than three services per week, your team spends more than an hour a day on laundry, you have had quality or hygiene issues with in-house washing, you are growing and cannot afford to scale laundry operations, or you want hygiene documentation for inspections.

In-house may still make sense if: you run a very small operation (under 30 covers, 2–3 services/week), you already own fully depreciated equipment with no replacement due, or your laundry volume is so low that a contracted collection minimum would be wasteful.

The honest answer for most independent and mid-size restaurants is that outsourcing saves money, saves time, and reduces the operational headache — once you have gone through the numbers properly.

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June 2026

The Complete Guide to Restaurant Tablecloth Care

Proper tablecloth cleaning keeps your dining room looking sharp, protects your linen investment, and stops minor stains from becoming permanent write-offs.

Restaurant tablecloth care is one of those operational details that guests notice without realising it. A perfectly pressed, spot-free cloth sets the tone for the entire dining experience. A yellowed hem or a stubborn red wine stain does the opposite. For restaurant managers and owners, getting tablecloth laundering right means understanding the right washing temperatures, stain-removal techniques, ironing standards — and deciding whether to handle it in-house or hand it off to a commercial laundry.

This guide covers everything you need to know, from the basics of laundering tablecloths to the point at which outsourcing your restaurant laundry service starts to make more financial sense than doing it yourself.

Why Tablecloth Care Matters More Than You Think

Table linen takes a beating. Over the course of a busy service, tablecloths are exposed to wine, olive oil, sauces, candle wax, lipstick, and everything in between. Multiply that across 50 covers, several sittings, and 300 days a year, and you are looking at a serious laundry workload — and significant replacement cost if linen is not properly maintained.

High-quality cotton or linen tablecloths are a genuine investment. A commercial-grade damask or percale cloth can cost £15–£40 per piece. Treating them correctly extends their lifespan significantly. Rough handling, the wrong detergent, or too-high a wash temperature will cause fibres to break down, colours to fade, and hems to fray — sometimes after just a handful of washes.

Quick rule: The most common cause of premature tablecloth damage in restaurants is washing at too high a temperature with the wrong detergent. Most cotton and linen cloths should be washed at 60°C — not 90°C — unless they are classified as healthcare linen requiring thermal disinfection.

Tablecloth Cleaning Temperatures: What to Use and When

Getting the wash temperature right is the single most important variable in tablecloth laundering. Too low and you will not shift grease or kill bacteria. Too high and you will damage the fabric and cause colours to bleed or whites to yellow.

White cotton tablecloths

Wash at 60°C with a commercial enzyme detergent. Use an optical brightener for whites. Avoid 90°C — it degrades fibres and causes yellowing over time.

Coloured or patterned linen

Wash at 40–60°C depending on fabric weight and the care label. Always test a new batch at the lower end first to check for colour fastness.

Polyester or poly-cotton blends

Wash at 40°C. Polyester is heat-sensitive and can pill or distort at higher temperatures. It also dries faster, which is useful for high-turnover services.

Heavily soiled cloths

Pre-treat stains before washing. A longer wash cycle at 60°C with a pre-soak enzyme detergent is more effective than a short blast at 90°C.

Tip: Always separate your tablecloths by colour before washing. Even lightly coloured napkins can bleed onto white cloths at 60°C. Keep whites, creams, and darks in separate loads.

How to Remove the Most Common Restaurant Stains

Speed is your biggest advantage when it comes to stain removal. The sooner you act, the less chance a stain has to set into the fibres. Here is how to handle the most frequent offenders in a restaurant setting.

Red wine

Blot (do not rub) immediately with a clean cloth to absorb as much as possible. Apply a small amount of cold water to dilute the stain. Pre-treat with an enzyme-based stain remover or a paste of bicarbonate of soda and water before washing at 60°C. Do not use hot water on fresh wine stains — it sets them.

Cooking oil and grease

Scrape off any solids and blot with a dry cloth. Apply a degreasing pre-treatment spray or washing-up liquid directly to the stain and leave for 10–15 minutes before washing. Enzyme detergents are particularly effective on lipid-based stains. Avoid letting oily cloths dry before treating — grease becomes much harder to shift once baked in.

Candle wax

Let the wax harden fully. Once hard, gently scrape off as much as possible with a blunt knife. Place the cloth between two sheets of brown paper and press with a warm iron — the paper absorbs the remaining wax. Then treat any residual oil stain and wash normally.

Lipstick and makeup

Apply a small amount of white spirit or surgical spirit to a cloth and dab at the stain from the outside in. Follow with an enzyme pre-treatment and wash at 60°C. Lipstick contains wax and pigment, so it needs both degreasing and colour-lifting treatment.

Tomato-based sauces

Rinse with cold water first, then pre-treat with an enzyme detergent or a white vinegar solution. Wash at 60°C. Avoid hot water on the initial rinse — tomato pigment can set quickly under heat.

Tip for busy services: Keep a spray bottle of cold water and a small bottle of enzyme pre-treatment spray at your linen station. Treating stains immediately — even just with cold water — dramatically improves the chance of full removal later.

Washing, Drying, and Pressing Standards

Laundering tablecloths goes beyond the wash cycle. How you dry and press them determines the final presentation — and how long the fabric holds up.

Washing: Use a commercial washing machine if possible. Domestic machines with small drums can crease and stress fabric. Use the correct detergent dose — overdosing causes residue build-up and can leave cloths feeling stiff or sticky.

Drying: Tumble dry on a medium heat setting, not high. Remove tablecloths while still slightly damp for pressing — bone-dry linen is much harder to iron smooth. Air-drying works well for poly-cotton blends and is gentler on the fabric.

Pressing: A steam iron or flatwork ironer gives the crispest finish. Press cotton and linen tablecloths on the reverse side with a hot steam iron. For large volumes, a commercial calender (flatwork ironer) is the industry standard — it presses, dries, and folds in one pass. This is one of the main reasons commercial laundries can produce consistently presentation-ready linen at scale.

In-House Laundering vs a Restaurant Laundry Service

Many restaurants wash their tablecloths in-house — in a back-of-house machine, or via a local launderette. It works at low volumes. But as covers grow, the limitations become apparent fast.

3–4×
More linen needed for in-house laundering to cover wash cycles

60%
Of restaurant linen damage is caused by incorrect washing temperatures

48hr
Typical turnaround from a commercial laundry — ready for the next service

In-house laundering also means tying up staff time, managing detergent stock, maintaining machines, and dealing with peaks — the Monday after a busy weekend wedding season, for instance. A dedicated restaurant laundry service removes all of that. You send soiled linen, you receive clean, pressed, presentation-ready tablecloths on a regular schedule.

Some restaurants also opt for linen hire rather than ownership — where the laundry supplier provides the tablecloths and napkins, maintains them, and replaces damaged pieces. This removes the capital cost of buying stock and eliminates linen management entirely. If your current stock is ageing or you are expanding to a second site, it is worth exploring a linen hire service as an alternative to reinvesting in new stock.

How to Extend the Life of Your Restaurant Tablecloths

Good laundry practice extends the lifespan of your linen — reducing replacement costs and keeping your dining room looking consistent. A few habits make a significant difference:

Rotate your stock properly. Do not keep pulling from the top of the pile — rotate stock so all cloths go through washing cycles evenly. Uneven rotation means some tablecloths wear out far faster than others.

Never wash at too high a temperature. As noted above, 60°C is the sweet spot for most restaurant linen. Higher temperatures cause fibre breakdown, yellowing, and shrinkage over time.

Deal with stains before they dry. Pre-treating stains in the hour after service dramatically reduces how hard those cloths have to work in the wash — which means a shorter, cooler cycle that is gentler on fibres.

Check for damage on return from the wash. A quick visual check when folding catches fraying hems, small tears, and thinning fabric before they become bigger problems. Remove damaged cloths from service — a worn tablecloth in the dining room does more harm than good.

Store linen properly. Keep clean tablecloths in a dry, well-ventilated linen room away from damp and direct sunlight. Damp storage encourages mildew; prolonged sunlight exposure fades whites and colours alike.

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