Opened in Spring of 2021, West Palm Beach, FL's PLANTA Restaurant is a high-end vegan restaurant chain created by celebrated chef David Lee and acclaimed restaurateur Steven Salm. Known for its chic and sophisticated interiors, the eatery
offers an elevated dining experience with an innovative, 100%-plant-based menu that promotes environmental sustainability. To take full advantage of Florida's weather, the new restaurant incorporates glass-paneled bifold doors from Schweiss Doors.
Three of the pass-thru doors are all comparable in size, with two measuring 8'-10" x 11'-5", while the slightly larger is 11'-2 x 8'. A serving window door at the bar measures 8'-11" by 5'-10". Each of the doors in the restaurant is equipped with gray liftstraps, rather than the standard
yellow, in addition to manual latch systems with side latch switches. All four control panels are wall-mounted at one location. Building construction was completed by Mocha Construction of Miami, while the architectural work was done by STA Architectural
Group, also of Miami. James S. Lavold Inc., of Jupiter, FL, installed the doors.
"It really amazes me how versatile and diverse the Schweiss bifold and hydraulic door systems can be used on different types of construction,”
Lavold says. “You can basically install Schweiss doors anywhere. This was the first high-end restaurant door installation for us. This particular project was kind of cool because it was in a real upscale area in the City of West Palm Beach.”
The restaurant owners and architects got the idea for these doors after seeing some Schweiss doors in operation at the City Place in West Palm Beach. City Place is a Mission Revival-style indoor-outdoor mall with a theatre, restaurants, stores
and palm-lined commons areas.
The bifold glass designer doors give the restaurant the flexibility of adding about 50 additional seats for customer who choose to sit outside at the year-round complex.
"With these doors,
I think they wanted to give the restaurant an industrial look within their finished restaurant where everybody could see them operating,” Lavold says. “When we first opened the doors, the owners all kind of stood back and watched the doors
go up and down. They thought it was really cool and said that was exactly what they were looking for.”
The PLANTA restaurant uses a location that had previously housed a different restaurant, but it was completely refurbished by PLANTA.
"What Schweiss delivered
all worked out great,” Lavold says. “We did have to deal with their openings and some existing construction openings that weren’t perfectly plumb or level, so we had a lot of little adjustments to do to try and get the doors to close
to where the floor matched the bottom of the door.”
Lavold says the City of Vero Beach was really, really happy with the liftstrap conversions they did on 14 hangar bifold doors finished there last year. Since then, he’s been
invited to do a dozen other Schweiss Doors project at high-end residences and others he refers to as “mansions on the beach,” in addition to an office building in Ft. Myers.
"Schweiss has a better designed and cleaner
operating system,” Lavold says. “I would definitely recommend Schweiss doors and strap conversions to others. We are actively seeking out new projects starting in Florida, but we will go anywhere.”