We own a small restaurant and go through staff shirts constantly. Between grease, industrial laundry and turnover, whatever we buy looks awful within a couple of months and we end up reordering. I'm not sure whether the problem is the garment, the decoration method, or just the reality of restaurant work. Anyone in food service solved this? I'd rather spend more once than keep replacing cheap shirts every quarter. We go through roughly thirty shirts a year across a staff of twelve, which adds up faster than I expected. Any advice on what to specify when ordering would be genuinely useful.

Some of it is unavoidable, but a lot of what you're describing is garment choice rather than decoration. Poly blends survive hot commercial washing far better than heavy cotton, which fades and shrinks. On the decoration side, embroidery holds up to that laundry cycle where a soft print won't. We switched our place over with help from PromoBox; their Apparel Printing & Embroidery Services team steered us toward a blend rather than what we originally picked. Also buy in two waves rather than one big order, so you learn how the first batch wears before committing the whole budget.