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The interior design of a popular high-street restaurant needs to be right. It sets the tone, the ambience, the mood, and what’s more, guests are likely to spend a lot of time looking around. They sit there as a kind of captive audience, awaiting food, admiring the décor and perhaps critiquing their surroundings. The windows need to be dressed appropriately, with a system that not only looks amazing, but is functional and useful to the premises.

When Steve Marks of Herdman Blinds was tasked with replacing the electric blinds in a popular highstreet noodle restaurant chain in St Albans, he knew he could depend on Yewdale. Herdman Blinds, which is over 50 years old, has accelerated over the past 18 months, having taken on Steve who had plenty of experience and connections in the blind industry. The fact that Steve had only dealt with Yewdale previously as a competitor didn’t faze him, and in fact the ‘insider knowledge’ helped him settle on the Yewdale systems for the job.

‘I had heard good reviews of the YewdaleDefiant® range,’ Steve says about the project. ‘I knew that with a Yewdale cassette system we could do a really good, neat job. The fascia could reach the entire length with three blinds on one barrel, saving us installing three individual cassettes in one, large window.’

The restaurant had previously been afflicted with an antiquated system of electric blinds, with ragged fabric and weak motors. It was clear that the blinds desperately needed a revamp. Steve knew that three YewdaleDefiant® C27 electric cassettes with five blinds in Light Grey 1% Roe fabric would not only be a vast visual improvement, but provide a practical solution too. However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Steve, who had to contend with an open-and-working restaurant whilst trying to survey with windows.

‘We could only take measurements because the restaurant was open and serving food,’ explains Steve. ‘We couldn’t take a look behind the wall to see whether the old blinds were hardwired or RTS. However, we knew there was power there and that we could convert whatever the circumstances to RTS.’

They only had a short space of time to install the blinds, but Yewdale’s cassette blinds are designed for quick and easy installation, providing our customers and fitters with confidence. ‘We had a window of opportunity to install the blinds – we had to get into the restaurant at 5.30am and we had to be finished and on our way by 11am, in time for the restaurant to open.’

The popular noodle restaurant was very pleased with the new cassette blinds and the installation, and are now able to remotely operate the blinds from one switch. Steve was also happy with the service he received from Yewdale commenting: ‘Brian, our Business Development Manager, was very good and helped us every step of the way with the ordering process. Speaking with Mick for technical information was very valuable and I was able to install the systems easily.’