Professional uniforms: what each job wears and the budget per person

Professional uniforms: the right garment for each job, and the budget per person

A well-chosen professional uniform is a pleasure to wear and makes your team recognisable at a glance. Embroidered with your logo, it costs from €57.99 excl. VAT per person for a team working outdoors to €160.12 excl. VAT in the kitchen, as a guide, according to our product pages as read on 10 November 2026.

A restaurant, a hotel, a shop or a network of several sites never dresses just one trade. The waitress, the cook, the receptionist and the sales assistant do not make the same moves or need the same washing. This guide goes job by job: which garments to plan, how many of each, and the budget per person.

Every price here is ours, taken from the tknp.io product pages on 10 November 2026: price per garment excluding VAT, embroidery of 8 x 10 cm in a single position, at the first tier of 10, the most affordable colour, standard lead time, before shipping and VAT. As the product page says, the quote is what counts.

What is a professional uniform?

A professional uniform is the set of clothes a team wears at work to be recognised and stay comfortable through a shift: the polo in the dining room, the jacket in the kitchen, the shirt at the front desk. It usually carries the company logo, embroidered on the left chest.

It is not the same as personal protective equipment (PPE), which protects against a hazard: that is not our trade, and tknp.io offers no protective equipment. Who has to provide, pay for and wash the uniform when you make it mandatory is covered in our guide to the mandatory work uniform, and the written rule that describes it in our guide to the company dress code.

Which professional uniform for which job?

Each job calls for two or three garments, and the budget per person runs from €57.99 to €160.12 excl. VAT, embroidered. The table sums up the uniform we recommend for each, based on three tops per person: one worn, one in the wash, one spare in the locker. Who provides, pays for and washes the uniform, and how many your collective agreement may require, belongs to the guide to the mandatory work uniform. The detail, the fabric and the washing follow job by job.

Price per person excl. VAT, embroidery 8 x 10 cm on each embroidered garment (trousers blank), single position, tier of 10 per model, read on 10 November 2026, as a guide.

The dining room: the polo and the long apron

For a restaurant dining room, three organic cotton piqué polos and two long bistro aprons come to €86.89 excl. VAT per person, embroidered. Stanley/Stella's Stanley Coaster polo (men's cut) and Stella Coaster polo (women's cut) cost €16.99 excl. VAT each, at 185 g/m², in the same 18 colours, from white to the Verdant Green in our photo; SG Clothing's Berlin apron, 100 x 100 cm, with a slit so staff can walk freely, costs €17.96. Choosing between polo, shirt and t-shirt, placing the logo and the apron for a full brigade have their own page: the waiter uniform.

The bar and the counter: the t-shirt and the short apron

At the bar, behind a café counter or at a bakery till, three t-shirts and two short aprons come to €61.07 excl. VAT per person. From B&C, the Perfect Pro, a 185 g/m² unisex t-shirt, comes to €12.91 excl. VAT embroidered; its page says it washes at 60 °C and goes in the tumble dryer, which matters when coffee flows all day. Newgen's Ristreto short apron, 25 x 70 cm with five pockets, costs €11.17.

A short apron stops at the hips: it leaves the legs free to move behind the counter and keeps a pen, a pad and a bottle opener within reach. The t-shirt comes in five colours (white, black, dark grey, navy, red): enough to match the counter to the apron.

The kitchen: the chef jacket and the bib apron

In the kitchen, three jackets and two bib aprons come to €160.12 excl. VAT per person, embroidered: the most expensive job in the table, because a chef jacket costs more than any dining room top. Karlowsky's Chef Jacket Gustav, unisex, in 215 g/m² polyester-cotton, costs €43.70 excl. VAT embroidered. Its page says it is pre-shrunk and stands up to industrial washing.

Newgen's Balthazar bib apron, 90 x 75 cm, washable at 60 °C, completes the uniform at €14.51. The jacket comes in white, black, anthracite and navy; the apron in eleven colours. In an open kitchen, the same apron colour on both sides of the pass ties the team together in the guests' eyes.

The front desk: the shirt

At a hotel front desk, three poplin shirts come to €75.54 excl. VAT per person in the men's cut and €73.98 in the women's cut. Russell's men's shirt costs €25.18 excl. VAT embroidered, the women's shirt €24.66; in polyester and cotton, they need little ironing, their pages say. The winter jumper, the colour and the logo for a hotel desk are covered in our guide to the receptionist uniform; a trade show or event welcome, in our guide to the hostess uniform.

The shop floor: the t-shirt and the hoodie

For a sales team, three t-shirts and one hoodie come to €76.55 excl. VAT per person, embroidered. From Stanley/Stella, the Creator 2.0, a 180 g/m² organic cotton t-shirt, comes to €12.65 excl. VAT; the Cruiser 2.0 hoodie, in 350 g/m² fleece, €38.60.

In a shop, the team's outfit looks like the merch the brand sells: a well-cut t-shirt and hoodie put the team in the style of the store. The hoodie earns its keep on restocking days in the stockroom and on winter days with the door open. Its page lists 58 colours for the Creator 2.0: the team can wear the colour of the season.

The spa and the beauty salon: the tunic

For a hotel spa or a beauty salon, three V-neck tunics come to €94.53 excl. VAT per person, embroidered. Karlowsky's tunic, women's cut, short sleeves, in recycled polyester and cotton, costs €31.51 excl. VAT. Its page says it washes at 95° and suits health and beauty jobs in particular.

According to its page, it closes with press studs and has a chest pocket, two side pockets and a hidden one. It comes in white, black, navy and royal blue. The high-temperature wash is what sets it apart from a dining room top: in a treatment room, linen goes in the machine every day.

The outdoor team: the polo and the softshell

For a team working outdoors (valets, delivery staff, the welcome desk of a car park or a campsite), three polos and one softshell come to €57.99 excl. VAT per person, embroidered: the lowest budget in the table. B&C's Inspire polo, in 180 g/m² pre-shrunk cotton, costs €11.56 excl. VAT; Result's men's softshell, windproof and water-resistant according to its page, €23.31, at the same price in the women's cut.

The softshell is worn open over the polo in spring and autumn and zipped up when the wind picks up: one jacket is enough for the whole year. If you are still weighing a warmer jacket, our comparison of softshell, fleece or puffer decides according to how cold the job gets.

The workshop and maintenance: the zip sweatshirt and the trousers

For a hotel's maintenance team, a shop's stockroom or a small workshop, two embroidered zip sweatshirts and two blank multi-pocket trousers come to €96.06 excl. VAT per person. Velilla's two-tone zip sweatshirt, 260 g/m², anti-pilling treated, costs €28.97 excl. VAT embroidered; Velilla's multi-pocket trousers, 200 g/m², €19.06 blank.

The trousers stay plain: the top carries the brand. None of these garments is protective equipment. For a building site or a more exposed trade, our guide to custom workwear reviews the models trade by trade.

How can you lower the budget per person?

The simplest lever is the quantity tier, which counts per model: 25 of the same reference cost less each than two orders of 12 and 13. For example, if 5 people in the dining room and 4 at the counter all wear three Perfect Pro t-shirts each, the 27 t-shirts move together to the tier of 25, at €12.16 excl. VAT instead of €12.91 for two separate orders of 15 and 12: €20.25 excl. VAT saved.

Another rule printed under the grid: a model ordered in several colours counts as one quantity provided the decoration does not change: navy in the dining room, black at the counter, one tier. From 25 of each model, the dining room uniform drops from €86.89 to €82.01 excl. VAT per person, and the kitchen one from €160.12 to €153.39. Two things push the bill up: the brand adds a surcharge on a few shades and on the biggest sizes, and a flat €15.00 excl. VAT delivery fee applies to each order shipped within France.

Embroidered or printed: which decoration for a professional uniform?

For a uniform that goes in the machine often, we recommend embroidery on the left chest, and at 10 it costs barely more than printing. On the Stanley Coaster polo, 8 x 10 cm embroidery costs €16.99 excl. VAT at 10 and A6 DTF transfer €16.98: one cent apart. One-colour screen printing becomes the cheapest in volume: €25.46 at 10, but €12.07 at 100.

Keep one technique per garment, even with two positions: embroidery on the chest and a print on the back do not age at the same pace. The cost of each technique on a heavier work garment is compared in our guide to custom workwear.

Professional uniforms: from how many, and how fast?

For an embroidered professional uniform, the threshold is 10 of each model, and the tknp.io FAQ gives ten working days to decorate it at the standard pace, plus one or two days of shipping in France. A blank garment, with no logo, can be bought one at a time.

It also lists an "express" pace of 5 days (+10%) and an economy pace of 20 days (-5%), and the basket gives the planned delivery date before checkout. To fit an opening or a season into that calendar, our guide to production lead times works back step by step.

See every job in your logo before you order

Eight jobs means eight garments to judge with the same logo: on each product page quoted here, the "Customise online" button opens our designer, which shows the jacket, the polo or the shirt with your decoration; the page gives its price, and nothing is owed before you order. How to find the company logo and try it from one garment to the next is set out in our page on custom clothing for companies.