Cafe automatic doors solve a problem specific to hospitality: almost every customer walking out has both hands full. This entrance for Bootlegger Coffee in Randburg needed to welcome a steady flow of customers without anyone having to put a coffee down.
Client: Bootlegger Coffee Company | Location: Randburg, Johannesburg | Sector: Hospitality / retail | Scope: Automatic doors & shopfront
The solution
We supplied and installed automatic sliding doors with an aluminium shopfront that opens the café up to the walkway and keeps the interior comfortable through the day.
Why cafe automatic doors make sense
A coffee shop entrance is used by people carrying cups, bags, laptops and phones, often all at once. A manual door is a genuine obstacle in that moment, and it is the one interaction a customer remembers on the way out.
An automatic entrance also lets a café open itself up to a walkway visually while still holding its climate – the glass front does the marketing, the operator handles the door.
Comfortable inside, inviting outside
Hospitality interiors live or die on comfort. An automatic door that closes promptly behind each customer keeps the conditioned air where it belongs, which matters as much for the people sitting near the entrance as it does for the energy bill.
Safety, sensors and compliance
Any automatic entrance runs unattended, so the safety devices matter as much as the operator itself. Presence and motion sensors hold the door open while somebody is still in the opening, safety beams guard the closing edge, and hold-open time and closing speed are set on commissioning to suit the traffic. Glazing in and around a door is a recognised human-impact position, so the glass specification should be confirmed against the applicable South African standards – see the South African Bureau of Standards, or our glazing compliance centre for a plain-English summary.
Keeping cafe automatic doors running
An entrance that opens hundreds of times a day is a mechanical system and needs to be treated like one. Sensors drift out of alignment, floor tracks collect grit, and operators need periodic adjustment. We install these systems and can keep them serviced afterwards, which is what keeps a busy entrance reliable rather than becoming the thing everyone complains about.
Why it works
- Hands-free entry for customers carrying coffee and bags
- Bright, open shopfront that draws passing trade
- Climate kept in for a comfortable café interior
- Reliable operator for continuous daily use
Opening a café or restaurant?
If you are specifying cafe automatic doors for a hospitality fit-out, we can survey the opening and finish the shopfront to your brand. See our custom shopfront work or browse other completed projects.
Backup power and access control
Battery backup, fail-open or fail-secure behaviour and the manual release are decisions about the building, not the operator, so they belong in the specification for Bootlegger Coffee, Randburg — shopfront & automatic doors from the start. The same is true of access control — readers, buttons, intercoms and time clocks all interrupt or enable the operator, and retro-fitting them is mostly cable and ceiling work.
Which door type suits the opening
Traffic and wall space decide the layout for Bootlegger Coffee, Randburg — shopfront & automatic doors. Single sliding is the everyday shopfront answer; bi-parting halves the travel and handles the busiest public entrances; telescopic stacks the leaves where there is not enough wall to park them; and a swing operator automates a hinged door you already have.
- MC-125 sliding: single leaf to 150 kg, or bi-parting 2 × 120 kg, openings 1450–5000 mm.
- MCW-100 swing: existing hinged doors to 1,200 mm / 150 kg (interdependent).
- Tested to one million operating cycles, 2-year manufacturer warranty on the operator.
Survey and specification for Bootlegger Coffee, Randburg — shopfront & automatic doors
A survey for Bootlegger Coffee, Randburg — shopfront & automatic doors is short but specific: structural opening width and height, the condition and support of the head, what runs above the ceiling line, the power position, and how people actually approach the doorway. Those notes become the specification, and they are also what makes two quotations comparable instead of guesswork.
How often should the door be serviced?
Every six months as standard. A supermarket door doing thousands of cycles a day may need more frequent visits than a quiet office entrance.
What warranty applies to the operator?
The MC-125 and MCW-100 carry a 2-year manufacturer warranty. Wear items such as belts, rollers and guides are replaced as part of servicing rather than under warranty.
Comfort, access and energy
A door that opens only when it is needed keeps conditioned air inside and dust and noise out, which is the practical argument for automation beyond convenience. Set the hold-open time for the slowest user rather than the fastest, add presence detection so nobody is caught in the opening, and the entrance works for everybody who uses the building.
Sizing against real use
Before anything is ordered we work out roughly how many cycles the doorway will see in a day. That figure drives the operator choice, the sensor layout and the service interval. It is also the honest way to compare quotations: two prices for the same opening mean very little if one was specified for light use and the other for constant public traffic.
What to send us for a quote
A useful quotation needs very little: the structural opening width and height, a photograph of the doorway taken square-on, a note of what is above the opening, and a rough idea of daily traffic. Tell us whether access control or a battery backup is wanted and the quote comes back complete rather than caveated.
- Structural opening width and height in millimetres.
- A square-on photograph of the doorway and what sits above it.
- Rough daily traffic, including deliveries.
- Whether access control, intercom or battery backup is wanted.
- Any deadline the entrance has to meet.
Can the door be set to stay open at busy times?
Yes. Hold-open time is adjustable, and many sites run a longer setting during deliveries or peak trading and a shorter one the rest of the day.
What glass comes as standard?
6.38 mm clear laminated safety glass, with tinted and performance options, quoted separately, where solar gain or privacy matters.
Cafe automatic doors in short
If you are pricing cafe automatic doors, send the structural opening sizes and a photograph and we will specify the system, the sensors and the glass against the traffic the doorway really carries. Cafe automatic doors are supplied, installed and serviced by one team, with spares held locally.
Ask us about cafe automatic doors and we will confirm the opening, the power supply and the traffic flow before quoting a fixed price.
Cafe automatic doors at a glance
- Pricing for cafe automatic doors follows the opening width, the glass and the sensor layout.
- Ask us to confirm the opening before ordering cafe automatic doors.
How a cafe automatic doors installation actually runs
Every entrance starts with a site survey rather than a catalogue number. We measure the structural opening, check what the floor and lintel will carry, look at how people actually approach the doorway, and confirm the power supply position. Only then does the operator get specified, because the same opening can need a different unit depending on traffic, exposure and how wide the clear opening has to be.
The frame and glazing are then manufactured to the confirmed sizes, delivered, and installed. Commissioning is the step that gets skipped most often elsewhere and matters most: opening speed, closing speed, hold-open time and sensor coverage are all set on site, with the door running, against the real approach path rather than a default profile. It is the step that separates cafe automatic doors that feel effortless from ones everybody in the building complains about.
What we need to know to quote
Most of the quoting delay on cafe automatic doors comes from missing information rather than complexity. If you can give us these up front, we can usually come back quickly:
- The structural opening width and height, measured rather than estimated
- Roughly how many people pass through on a busy day
- Whether the opening is internal, or exposed to weather and wind
- Any landlord, centre-management or fit-out specification that applies
- Whether an existing frame is being replaced or it is a new opening
If you are not sure on any of it, a site visit sorts it out faster than a drawing exchange – and it avoids the most expensive mistake in this trade, which is an operator specified for the wrong duty and replaced a year later. Specified properly at the start, cafe automatic doors should run for years with nothing more than servicing.
