The needs of each unique establishment vary; as a result it is important to pick out the right designs for each coffee shop or restaurant. For instance, in a standard coffee shop where you may not necessarily have people who are art savvy it is important that you choose your design pieces in one of three different ways, because the way you choose them can make a huge difference in how you connect to your patrons. The first recommendation is that you choose pieces that people recognize such as works like Devinci’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s The Creation of Man or Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night.

The second recommendation is this: If you would like to do something more obscure like Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss or Peter Paul Ruben’s Hélène Fourment you should consider adding metal label plates to the frames or on the table tops they can put a faux plate onto the laminate. This is also true if you are adding a variety of abstract art like Paul Klee’s Magic Garden or Picasso’s L'Accordéoniste. The third recommendation to coffee shops or restaurants that don’t have a steady stream of art connoisseurs is to place art that works with the general décor or your restaurants’ basic theme or style in mind. For instance, Vincent van Gogh’s The Café Terrace on the Place du Forum, Arles, at Night would be a great touch for a European style café.

Now if you can count on your patrons being sophisticated art connoisseurs you can get away with not putting the engraving plates on the tables or even on the frames. In fact it may even enhance your environment by leaving them off, creating great conversational pieces.

In addition to targeting which art pieces to use based on the general knowledge of your patrons you will also want to consider the age appropriateness of your artwork. Nudity in the artwork may be objectionable to a family friendly restaurant or café. Moreover you may want to consider sociological and psychological factors such as racial overtones and the mood of the overall piece. In reverse, those factors may be exactly what you are looking for. I am fond of a coffee shop in South Carolina named Keowee that does a wonderful job at bringing a warm multicultural environment to their coffee shop.

Decorative dining is not limited to creating just table tops or framed prints they can also produce tiled murals and custom china. The art work featured on the table tops, frames and other merchandise features artist such as Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse, Rembrandt, Paul Cezanne, Peter Paul Rubens, Wassily Kandinsky, Raphael, Gustav Klimt, Paul Klee, Paul Gauguin and Michelangelo.

Shawn Larson is the owner and operator of CafeProducts.com; A website where people can buy products and find startup and ongoing resources for building and growing their restaurant businesses. Shawn has also been a contibuting writer in a variety of places including the Colorado Business Journal and Lifestyle Magazine.