Ask George: Do you evaluate a restaurant by the cleanliness of its restrooms? Chuck T., St. Louis
I know a lot of people who do, but as a former restaurant owner, I see benchmarking parameters through different eyes. Restroom cleanliness is on my list—but it’s not on my short list. Here’s why:
First of all, cleanliness a highly subjective term. What’s “clean” to me might not be clean to someone else. (A Mahe household example illustrates the point: A room that I see as clean, for example, my wife sees only as “straightened.”)
Second, a customer’s expectations vary depending on the restaurant, not so much on its price point (a restroom at Denny’s should be as clean as the one at Dominic’s), as its style (it’s fair to expect a little less fastidiousness in a high-volume sports bar).
Charlie Downs (co-owner of Cyrano’s Café and Sugarfire Smokehouse), who has owned or managed many restaurants and bars throughout his career, agrees. “In a high-traffic situation, it’s usually not possible to maintain a super-high level of cleanliness,” he said. “The manager has a hard enough time just making sure the floor is picked up and having the necessary items stocked and available.”
So third, I’m more lenient with places that are experiencing high volume. I am not one of those people who draws a hard and fast, “no exceptions” line between the cleanliness of the kitchen and that of the restrooms. It’s apples and oranges.
Regardless, there is a lot that restaurants do and can do to keep their restrooms clean.
Begin by paying the professionals. No one cleans a restroom better than a cleaning professional—daily, biweekly, whatever it takes. Stephen Savage, co-owner of The Wheelhouse in Clayton and the newly-opened location at 1000 Spruce Street downtown (two very busy restaurant/bars), says a professional crew cleans his restaurant –and deep-cleans his restrooms—every morning. “Although we all maintain the restrooms throughout the day,” he said, “I look to my staff to provide great customer service, not to perform a task they were not properly trained to do.”
Savage has even hired a restroom attendant (who works from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. in the busy downtown location) to eliminate stock outs and generally keep the restrooms in order, eliminating potential complaints before they ever occur.
When I was in the business, I saw it much the same way. It was my managers who were responsible for policing the restrooms, not the employees (which also kept any bathroom shenanigans to a minimum). I had two rules: "you can't clean the restrooms often enough" and it had to occur "hourly at a minimum." But I’ll never forget the time I was informed that the ladies room was out of a particular personal item… the exact words were “we need some more fenimine doo-dads” (misspelling intentional).
