Polished Concrete Floors in a Pizzeria in Washington, DC

To most people in the United States, pizza is a “party food.” It’s what people automatically go to on a Friday night when they’re tired from the week and don’t want to cook. It’s the go-to for birthday parties and no matter what the event is — even if you’re just watching a movie at home on the couch — pizza from a pizzeria just makes it seem so much more fun.

The benefits of polished concrete floors in a pizzeria, and in restaurants in general, can’t be overstated. A lot of restaurants still choose to use carpet or tiles for a floor covering but we’ve all seen how dirty those can get, even when they’re cleaned regularly. Carpet just doesn’t make sense in a pizzeria, where there’s the potential for sauce, cheese and greasy meats to get dropped on them all day and night. And in the kitchen—definitely not!

In the restaurant business, sanitation is of utmost importance. In a pizzeria, particularly, there’s always fine flour flying around, cheese, hot sauce, and heat from an oven. The floor must be easy to clean so that all of the flour and oil simply wipes away and doesn’t get ground in to any joints or seams. The floor should not show traffic wear and tear and it should convey a feeling of trust to the customer that the restaurant is clean and sanitary.

There are two great thing about polished concrete floors in a pizzeria. One, on the practical side, is that polished concrete is easy to maintain. Once the polish is achieved and the concrete is sealed, it’s good to go for years. Maintenance is minimal and the concrete is highly resistant to any sort of damage–whether it’s from heat or cold, chips or scratches, cleaning chemicals or food of any kind being dropped on it.

Secondly, on the visual side, the concrete is completely customizable. A limitless array of integral colors can be added to the concrete, and metallic epoxy can be applied that provide visual interest in almost any pattern or color combination that can be imagined. The look can be traditional, such as checkerboard patterns on the floor or in any color combination for a totally unique look. Polished concrete in your pizzeria can even be fashioned to mimic the look of natural stone, or it can incorporate a stencil design such as your logo or an old-world image to add to your theme. Anything you can imagine is possible with polished concrete floors!

Recently, Concrete Inspired based in Severn, MD installed Skraffino concrete microtopping to achieve a polished concrete appearance in of the restaurants of the pizza franchise called Flippin Pizza located in Washington, DC. Polished concrete floors can be achieved by grinding and polishing with machine or it can be also achieved by applying concrete micro-topping, integrally coloring and sealing it with a clear coats like epoxy and polyurethane. In a restaurant, the later method is preferred method. In Flippin Pizza the later method was adopted since the condition of the concrete substrate was not suitable for polishing with a machine. In this project, Concrete Inspired used two coats of Skraffino integrally colored with Colorfast colors followed by a coat of water based epoxy primer, 100% solids epoxy body coat, followed by clear aliphatic polyurethane.