Notes from the shop
Restaurants, cafes and retail floors turn over staff quickly, and every new face needs a shirt that matches the ones already on the floor. That is the steady demand in Rajouri Garden: a first batch when a place opens, then small repeat orders, with the occasional promotional run for a launch or a festival weekend.
Clothing worn at the front of house gets washed constantly, so the print has to outlast the shirt rather than the other way round. A smaller chest logo on a darker fabric survives that routine better than a large light-coloured print, and it hides the marks that a shift in a kitchen or a stockroom leaves.
The repeat order is the part worth setting up properly at the start. Once the fabric, the colour and the placement are recorded, a batch of four shirts for new joiners can be matched to the twenty printed last year. Those short runs are printed digitally rather than set up on a screen again.