Cabaret seating

Rounds with chairs on the front two-thirds, usually 6 per table, for shows with food.

How it works in practice

Cabaret uses the same 60- or 72-inch rounds as a dinner, but chairs fill only the front two-thirds of each table, leaving the back third open toward the stage. Nobody has to turn their chair around when the show starts, and servers can still reach every place setting from the open side. It sits between banquet rounds, which maximize covers, and theatre seating, which maximizes sightlines but has no tables.

Cabaret and crescent rounds are close cousins. Planners tend to say cabaret when there is a show with food and drinks, and crescent when it is an awards dinner or a conference session.

Worked numbers

The catch is floor space. A round needs roughly the same footprint whether it seats 6 or 10, so cabaret uses far more room per guest.

Before you add a stage, aisles and a bar, the cabaret room is already more than half again as large. Centrepieces, linens and server staffing scale with table count too.

In Ontario and the GTA

The Ontario Building Code works out occupant load for seating at tables at 0.95 m² per person, and the posted occupant load set by the fire authority is a legal maximum. Cabaret will rarely come near either, but confirm the posted number for the room anyway, especially if the venue wants to add standing room at the back for the show.

Questions to ask

• Of the venue: what is the cabaret capacity of this room with our stage size?
• Of the performer: how deep is the act’s playing area, and does anyone come into the audience?
• Of the caterer: can plates be cleared before the headliner starts, from the open side of each table?

Angle the tables in the back rows slightly toward centre stage and check sightlines from the worst seat before you sign off the floor plan. Raise the stage if the back rows are more than about 12 m away.

Related tools

Run both layouts in the venue capacity calculator, then price the extra tables in the event budget calculator.