Plywood, if not familiar with it already, is a type of manufactured wood made from thin sheets of wood or plies. The layers are glued together so that adjacent plies have their wood grain at right angles to each other to create one solid piece.

Plywood is easy to use in terms of construction, you can simply cut a rectangle of plywood. Plywood may disintegrate if it comes in contact with water, which in a restaurant is bound to happen. Engineered wood, which is what plywood is considered to be, can be made from waste material like sawdust and chips, but solid wood requires large sections of wood that are free from defects.

Solid wood is composed of wood with no particle board or wood fiber. It’s the resulting board milled from the tree. While solid wood is more expensive, it is at a higher cost due to the durability and quality of the wood. It takes a bit more time to use for construction because it has to be shaped to form the end product.

 Many people consider solid wood to be more aesthetically pleasing as well. Especially when considering booths, if an end piece is showing and it is made of plywood it would reveal the glued pieces of ply. If a booth is built of solid wood you would not have this problem.

So while plywood may be cheaper and easier to construct, it is no match for solid wood furniture when considering quality.