Buying A Booster For The Dining Table: Tips & Advice

Let’s talk booster seats for toddlers at dinner time!

When it comes to buying a booster seat, you have two basic choices: tray or no tray.

The most popular kitchen boosters for toddlers are those without a tray. This type of booster helps boost a child up to the dining table, where they eat with the rest of the family.

Booster seats with trays are helpful if you have a younger child and you don’t have room for a high chair. The tray is helpful for holding a bowl, etc. 

Consider these tips when looking for a booster:

• Is the booster dishwasher safe? Yes, some models are designed to fit inside a dishwasher, simplifying cleanup. 

• Strap or no strap? Some booster seats for the dining table have a safety strap to keep a toddler from falling out of the chair—however, these belts aren’t foolproof. Regardless, if you’re using a booster off the floor (attached to a kitchen chair) a strap may offer additional safety. Older kiddos may be fine without the strap. 

• Crevices can be a food magnet. When it comes to toddlers and food, it’s always surprising where the food ends up. The best booster seats are designed without cracks or crevices for food to hide!

After testing out several models and surveying our parent readers, here are our recommendations the best booster seats for the dining table:

Why Trust Us

We’ve been rating and reviewing kitchen boosters, hook-on chairs and high chairs since 1994. In addition to hands on testing of boosters, we have combed the research about reliability, cleanability and efficiency. We also evaluate consumer reviews posted online, as well as our own message boards.

Here’s another key point: we don’t take money from the brands we review. No free samples, no sponsors, no “partnerships.” Baby Bargains is your independent and unbiased source for expert baby gear reviews. We’ve been writing and reviewing baby gear since 1994. Yes, 1994!

How we picked a winner

We evaluate kitchen booster seats with in-depth inspections, checking models for overall quality, safety and ease of use—for example, attaching them to a wide variety of dining chairs. We also gather significant reader feedback (our book, Baby Bargains has over 1 million copies in print), tracking boosters on quality and durability. Besides interviewing parents, we also regularly talk with retailers and consumer experts to see which brands are most trustworthy and other key quality metrics.