This SF Company Lets You Rent Picture-Perfect Table Settings For Your Next Dinner Party
The best part about throwing a dinner party: raising glasses with friends you love. The worst part? Pretty much everything else. We love entertaining as much as the next person, but there’s no overstating how much work and planning it *actually* takes to achieve that breezy, laid-back hostess vibe. Thankfully, a new type of event rental company is changing the game in a big way. How big? Think: no more day-after dishwashing.
Liz Curtis, founder of “rent the table” service Table + Teaspoon, was inspired by a long summer spent homebound in the thick of studying for the California Bar Exam. “Going stir-crazy and craving comfort food, I turned on the Food Network and decided it couldn’t possibly be that hard to roast a chicken,” she tells us. What followed was a slow progression from takeout-lover to foodie, from foodie to food blogger, and finally, from hostess to professional catering and events company founder.
After turning her passion into a business, Curtis wanted to find a way to expand it in a format that could work nationwide, and Table + Teaspoon’s “rent the table” service was born. “This specific idea hit me while I was picking up my zillionth order from an enormous — and very un-glamourous — party rental warehouse in South San Francisco,” Curtis tells us. “I thought to myself, ‘In a city where you can order literally anything on demand — flowers, dresses, tuxes, meals, chefs, groceries, cocktails, servers, sommeliers — why can’t you similarly order your tablescape? Pulling together everything you need to serve your meal can be more daunting than preparing the meal itself.” Curtis pivoted from her original vision to introduce a service where you can rent everything from table linens to silverware, and to focus in on making every hostess’ job ultra-easy from start to finish. (And yes, that includes the cleanup.)
After the last guest is gone, party hosts can simply load all the dishes back into their box and they’re ready to return to Table + Teaspoon — a serious game-changer. “Post-dinner party, doing every single dish for a multiple-course evening can take an entire day,” she says. “No one has time for that! The Table + Teaspoon packaging is crafted to be anti-microbial and entirely sanitizable. These requirements also enabled us to be zero-waste, unlike every other rental company out there. The only component that goes in the trash from our boxes is the shipping label. Thankfully, we have commercial dishwashers that make it much easier for us to handle your dishes once they arrive back at the warehouse.”
Table + Teaspoon‘s custom place settings start at $24 per guest, which include table runners, candlesticks and candles, and place cards in addition to all the dishes and glassware you’ll need to host brilliantly. And, of course, the (priceless) knowledge that you won’t have to wash a single wine glass.
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(Photos via Table + Teaspoon)