Oak Street Manufacturing and Flash Furniture both sell restaurant furniture that includes imported product lines, but they take different approaches to the market: Oak Street specializes exclusively in commercial-grade restaurant and hospitality furniture, manufacturing and importing different product categories based on what each one calls for, while Flash Furniture is a high-volume wholesale furniture company covering home, office, restaurant, school, bar, and church furniture sold through mass retail channels.
Product focus
Oak Street Manufacturing, founded in 1995, builds 100% of its booths and benches and the majority of its table tops in-house at its U.S. based Iowa facility, splits casework evenly between manufacturing and importing, and imports the majority of its table bases, seating (chairs and barstools), and outdoor furniture — every category built or selected specifically for restaurant and hospitality use. Flash Furniture, founded in 2001 in Canton, Georgia, sells specialty seating across markets as different as home owners, consumers, restaurants, schools, theaters, and churches alongside home and office furniture, shipped from multiple warehouses across the US.
How each company sells
Flash Furniture operates as a large-scale wholesale supplier, with inventory available through mass retail and foodservice marketplaces. Oak Street Manufacturing sells exclusively B2B through its servicing dealer network, with an account manager assigned to each order and acknowledgment within 24 hours — a smaller-scale, higher-touch sales and service model built around restaurant and hospitality projects specifically.
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Quality and specialization
Because Oak Street’s primary focus is on commercial-grade restaurant and hospitality furniture — every product in its portfolio, whether manufactured in Iowa or imported, is selected and built to commercial-duty specifications for high-traffic dining venues. Flash Furniture’s broader focus, from classrooms to churches to home offices, trades vertical-specific durability testing for breadth of selection at a lower price point.
Which one fits a restaurant project?
A restaurant designer or project manager prioritizing furniture built and vetted specifically for daily commercial dining use, with a dedicated account manager and dealer support, will find Oak Street Manufacturing’s experienced restaurant and hospitality focus ideal. A business limited to a tighter up-front budget across multiple property use types, or that values the widest possible style selection, will find Flash Furniture’s broad wholesale catalog useful.