Skip to content 
A timber window counter with stools in a storefront, and a glass fronted display counter with a mosaic tiled base. Retail millwork is the one category where the cabinetry has a commercial job to do beyond holding things, and that changes how it gets specified.
The counter is a sightline decision
Where a display counter sits determines what a customer sees from the door and how they move through the space. Too close to the entrance and it blocks the room. Too far and the staff position ends up isolated from the product. That is worked out with the operator, not assumed from the plan, because the person behind it every day knows things the drawing does not.
A window counter has the opposite job. It is there to put activity in the glass, which means the seated height, the depth and the run length are set by how people actually sit and what passers-by see, not by a standard bar dimension.
Glass fronts change the whole build
Once a face is glass, the carcass behind it is on display. Joints that would be hidden in a kitchen become visible detail. Edges are finished on all sides. Interior surfaces get the same finish as the exterior, because a customer leaning over the counter is looking straight at them.
Glass also brings tolerance down to near nothing. A frame that is a couple of millimetres out will not take the panel, and there is no scribe to take up the difference.
Mixed materials need a plan for movement
Tile on a timber base is two materials with different rates of movement meeting at a visible line. That junction gets designed rather than discovered, with a substrate that will not flex behind the tile and a detail at the transition that can take a small amount of movement without cracking a grout line.
Retail runs on a fixed date
The difference between a retail fit-out and a home is that a store has an opening day and rent running from it. Manufacturing locally rather than importing is what makes that survivable, because when the site throws up a surprise the change goes to the machine here and comes back in days rather than restarting a shipping cycle.
More on this work is on the retail cabinetry page and commercial cabinetry. Pricing for multi-unit and repeat scopes is covered on the cabinetry packages page.
