Dumbwaiters

Garage Lift Companies Lift Experts

First of all, no, it’s not the guy from last night who brought you the chicken when you asked for the duck and then messed up all your dessert orders as well; he may very well have been a dumb waiter, but he isn’t our concern right now. Good, so we’ve got that dreadful joke out of the way early on and now we can get on with the business of telling you about dumbwaiters. Much more likely to be found in the shape of service elevators these days, dumbwaiters really hark back to a bygone era of servants and majestic mansion houses where elegant and lavish dinner parties would be thrown.  

Dumbwaiters are, essentially, a very small form of lift which would work on a system of pulley’s and opposing weights- they were originally designed to minimise the number of servants who were needed to be present in the room when a dinner party was being thrown and, whilst some of them still remain in domestic dwellings, they are now more commonly used in hotels and restaurants where the kitchen is on a different floor to the dining room or when food needs to be delivered to a room before it becomes cold. Food, or empty plates, would be placed into the shaft of the dumb waiter and then raised up or lowered down so that they could be collected at the other end- this ultimately meant that only one servant needed to be present to dish out the food and then clear the plates- the rest of the ‘downstairs’ people could wait below and get on with the washing up whilst the guests moved on to the drinking and smoking portion of their evening.

Benjamin Franklin was a huge fan of these types of lifts and he even suggested, in some quarters, to be one of the people who had a hand in inventing them- they are certainly conceived around his time- although one inventor has never been pinned down. In their domestic form they are now much more of a collectable novelty- there aren’t many people who use them seriously anymore; the advances in technology which mean we can keep food heated until it’s ready to eat and the fact that many houses are simply too small to accommodate a lift shaft such as the one a dumb waiter needs, means that they really have gone out of fashion for private use.

They are also quite rare in the kitchen and hospitality trade although this is where one is most likely to find them.  It seems to be rather on-trend and in fashion at the moment to see your food cooked in front of you or to see the kitchen at least, and be able to savour the sights and smells of your food being prepared. Clearly, if the customers are sat in the same place as the food is being prepared, then a dumbwaiter most certainly isn’t necessary (even if a dumb waiter is almost always present). However, in more old-fashioned style restaurants where the kitchen is beneath the diners, or indeed in large hotels where the kitchen may be some way away from a guests room who has ordered room service, dumbwaiters offer a smaller and more compact alternative to the service lift which is their main rival (and of which there is information on this very website if you should so care to read about it).

It is highly possible that the technology behind dumbwaiters, and most certainly the idea behind them, is what led people to consider much more complex and technological lifts which would ultimately be able to carry passengers and heavy goods over much greater distances. When they first arrived, the dumbwaiters were a technical marvel and something which really latched onto the way of living at the time- much in the same way that modern-day lifts latch onto our desire for vertical high-rise living in the 21st Century.

If you are thinking of getting a dumbwaiter, either for your home or business then you should no they aren’t cheap- partiuvclarly if you are going for the former and plan to have one installed in your domestic dwelling. Because they are quite rare, and demand is not that high anymore, prices can be farely high and, if you decide to have one installed in your home from scratch then you should also consider the structural reworking which may very well need to be done in order for you to accommodate the dumbwaiter shaft and the safety-proofing of this which will also need to be done. Read the following articles on dumbwaiters and, hopefully, you should be slightly more clued up and then you can get on with ordering on for yourself- let’s just hope you get what you ordered!         

Dumbwaiter Information Guide: