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How to Have Restrooms That Enhance, Rather Than Hurt, Your Reputation

And then there are restrooms. They probably aren't why most foodies go into the restaurant business, but they often are why guests don't go back into restaurants. Few things can turn diners off as quickly or as permanently as a disgusting bathroom. On the other hand, clean, attractive, even entertaining bathrooms can make a strong statement about an establishment's personality and commitment to quality customer service.

As the Detroit Free Press's Sylvia Rector reported last year in a piece headlined, "Dirty restaurant restrooms send customers out the door": "It's fun to visit a restaurant with a restroom so gorgeous that you come back to the table and tell your friends, 'You've got to see the bathroom.' It's no fun at all to find the other kind -- one that makes you go back and say, 'Don't go in there.' Grimy door handles, dirty floors, chipped toilet seats and cruddy soap dispensers give me an icky feeling about the whole place.

"Suddenly, I'm not eager to finish my dinner. Maybe that's unfair, but it's not uncommon." The paper cited an online survey of 2,175 adults by Harris Interactive the year before that found 88 percent of restaurant patrons say that restroom cleanliness reflects a restaurant's overall hygiene, including sanitary standards in the kitchen and prep areas.

Bathrooms and Beatings

"It's something that my wife beats me up about constantly," says John Brandt-Lee, chef/owner of Avalon Restaurant, a rustic Italian concept in West Chester, Pennsylvania. "My wife says the bathroom is the most important room in the entire restaurant; that that's how people judge a restaurant. She says that if you can't keep a tidy, clean restroom then everything else is going to be real trouble."

Brandt-Lee says he agrees with his wife's assessment. "Actually, she has it so ingrained in me now that the three things I look at in any restaurant I go to are how clean the server's apron is, how clean the windows are when you walk in the door, and what the bathrooms are like." Avalon seats 65 in its main dining room, another 30 in a second-floor dining room and 50 in an outdoor patio area.

What pleases patrons about restrooms? "Cleanliness is the biggest thing," Brandt-Lee says, "so it has been ingrained in all of my servers that the restrooms have to be checked throughout the night and that everything is cleaned before service." Avalon also pays for a service that comes in and thoroughly cleans its two bathrooms twice a week. "We don't have a bar, so we don't run into a lot of the congestion that you see with a lot of restaurants," Brandt-Lee says. "Two bathrooms with a couple of stalls each works just fine."

Brandt-Lee says that Avalon's restrooms were "kind of plain and boring" until a recent facelift. "The men's room we don't worry about so much, but the women's bathroom we just spent a lot of time remodeling. We went and got some really nice art work for it. We tried to give it a more comfortable, subdued, home type of feel to it."

One notable addition is pop art on the wall. "It's an image of Rita Hayworth and about four or five different-colored versions of her face," Brandt-Lee says. There is also art work on another wall, which he describes as pampering. "We also try to do fresh flowers in the ladies room all the time." Another pleasant touch is soft hand towels for hand drying. "We also have the air-blow machine for sanitary reasons. In case somebody feels that's a better way for them to go they have that option. We put a little hand cream in there for the ladies, so it has a very nice feminine feel when they go in there."

Two Angles

"I would take it from two different angles," says Dr. Stephani Robson, senior lecturer at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. "One is the fact that a bathroom has got to be clean and well lit. But then the other angle is, make it part of the experience."

As an example, Robson points to Stan Romano's Macaroni Grill chain. "When you go into the restroom there is an audio of Italian lessons, and there are flowers in there. That organization has tried to make the restroom an extension of the dining experience, and I don't mean that in an elementary way." What that says to the guests is that "you are paying attention. So do cleanliness and good lighting."

Indeed, a review of Macaroni Grill posted on epinions.com says, "I was momentarily slowed in my mission to relieve myself because the first bathroom door read 'Uomini,' which I figured out meant 'Men' thanks to my memory of high-school Italian (and the fact that it said "Men" right below the Italian word). As I was standing there taking a 'pisciare' (look it up in your Italian translation guide), I was more than a bit startled to hear some guy speaking loudly in Italian. I wasn't sure which stall he was in or what he was saying, but it sounded a bit too sexy for a guy with his pants down."

Another example of a restaurant that is doing "interesting things" with its bathrooms is the Michelin-recognized Public Restaurant in New York City, although Robson says she takes issue with the lighting. The designer is a company called AvroKO. Public is owned and operated by the AvroKO Restaurant Group, composed of design and concept firm AvroKO, and partner Dan Rafalin. The group also owns Public's neighboring wine bar, The Monday Room, as well as Double Crown and Madam Geneva at Bowery and Bleecker Street.

"What they've done in the bathroom is recognize that people like to take souvenirs," Robson says. Patrons find individually wrapped soaps, like what guests see in a hotel, with the restaurant's name and address on it. "Instead of getting matches, which we did 30 years ago, they have a wall in the bathroom that is just filled with these soaps."

The bathroom itself is very stylish in keeping with the design of the restaurant, but it's also got "very low" lighting, Robson says, "which for a female is suboptimal. Actually, it's good in some ways because you always look great; you look in the mirror and think, 'I look 25!' But most guests would like the lighting to be flattering but adequate for maintenance.'"

Three Things

According to Ecolab in St. Paul, Minnesota, the two most frequent comments regarding restrooms are that they need to look neat and tidy, and that there should be no foul odors.

"A restroom needs three things," says Jennifer Kirscher, Ecolab's manager of global communications. "A pleasant smell, or no smell at all; a lack of debris/stains on the floor; and a well-stocked supply of toilet paper, hand towels and hand soap. Basically, customers are looking for a restroom to be taken care of and not just cleaned on an infrequent basis."

A common mistake restaurant operators make is using the same cleaning materials for both the toilet and other parts of the restroom. The result, Kirscher says, is "spreading the dirty aspects of the toilet to other areas of the restroom." To avoid the potential for cross-contamination, many operators choose to buy color-coded tools. Operators can pick one color tool for the restroom and a different color for the kitchen, front of house and outside. The risk of cross-contaminating other areas of the restroom or the restaurant is eliminated, she says, and the restrooms are ultimately much cleaner and safer for the guests.

Sustainable cleaning within a facility, including its restrooms, requires a comprehensive program approach that considers the total effect on the environment, Kirscher says. High-quality cleaning systems are designed to help customers protect the health and safety of their employees and their guests. Products with controlled dispensing that are designed to conserve water, energy and waste have become more popular.

Managers need to make it a point to keep disinfectant, glass cleaner, floor cleaner and microfiber cloths on hand for cleaning staffers. At a minimum, Ecolab says, restrooms should be cleaned daily. High-traffic restrooms such as those found in quick-service restrooms and even convenience stores should be cleaned even more frequently.

Handling Paper

"What many of our customers don't fully appreciate or take the time to understand -- after all, it's just toilet paper and tissue -- is that paper requires an incredibly resource-intensive process," says Steve Ott, sustainable business development manager for Cascades Inc. in Waterford, New York. "It uses an incredible amount of energy, an incredible amount of water and an incredible amount of fiber." Unlike office papers, which are recycled as many as six times in a life cycle, toilet paper is used once, so it makes little sense to use a lot of environmental resources to manufacture something that will be discarded after a single use, he says.

"Certainly, from a paper products perspective, they need to provide a product that functions, that's efficient and that's pleasing," Ott says.

"Increasingly, what we find -- and this is true of all businesses, not just restaurants -- is that hygiene is a key consideration with respect to dispensing systems and ultimately paper. So touch-free dispensing, particularly on paper towels, is increasingly critical in those environments." Ott's company markets a touch-free dispenser that does not require the patron to touch any portion of it, all but eliminating any chance of cross-contamination.

"From the restaurant operation's internal perspective, obviously they are going to be interested in reducing their operating costs for paper, which can be significant," Ott says. Reducing their "cost per hand dry" is accomplished with heavier, more absorbent paper and a dispenser designed to limit the number of towels per hand dry, which, of course, also goes right to the restaurateur's bottom line.

A so-called stub roll on a hand towel dispenser can also produce savings by eliminating the need to place unfinished paper rolls -- some estimate as much as 15 percent to 20 percent of the entire roll -- on sinks, where they can get wet and unusable.

Restroom paper products made using renewable energy and the use of paper products that are sustainably manufactured and 100 percent recycled can prove a big plus. On-dispenser signage helps restaurant owners communicate their sustainability commitment to consumers.

Making Your Restroom Pleasing to the Environment and Your Accountant, Too

Restrooms account for an average of 35 percent of the water use in restaurants, according to the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

Colleen Oteri, communications manager for the Green Restaurant Association (GRA) in Boston, says that a leaky toilet can waste up to 200 gallons per day. GRA recommends standard maintenance to ensure leaks don't occur.

Faucets that use as much as 2.5 gallons per minute can be replaced with newer models that use only 1.5. In most cases, low-volume faucet aerators can be installed when the entire faucet does not need replacing.

Water use in toilets can be reduced by installing toilet tank water displacement devices, such as toilet dams, bags or weighted bottles. Another way to save is by retrofitting flushometer (tankless) toilets with water-saving diaphragms, which save one gallon, or 20 percent, per flush.

GRA advocates replacing toilets with low-volume models. "Toilets can use as much as 4.5 gallons per flush, while low-volume toilets use only 1.6 gallons per flush," GRA says. An average savings of more than 16 percent of a restaurant's total water use was possible through this one water conservation action.

Water usage in urinals can be reduced by setting urinals with programmable automatic flush valves to a water-saving mode that flushes the urinal after more than one use. Operators can also replace their current urinals with low-volume models. Urinals, the organization says, can use as much as 5 gallons per flush, while low-volume urinals use only one gallon per flush.

GRA urges restaurant operators to install motion-sensor faucets in bathrooms so that they aren't left running. Motion-sensor lighting will cut back on energy use in bathrooms, as it's an area of a restaurant that doesn't require constant light. In fact, lighting is said to account for 13 percent of energy used to run an average restaurant. That means that installing energy-efficient lighting can save up to $1,880 per year.

According to Oteri, the GRA urges restaurateurs to purchase paper products made from high percentages of post-consumer recycled content. One GRA-endorsed manufacturer's product is made from 100 percent recycled content, 60 percent post-consumer waste, and is processed chlorine free.

Essentials

As noted, some restaurants go out of their way to entertain patrons with their bathrooms. Jungle Jim's International Market in Fairfield, Ohio, for example, a one-time winner of an America's Best Restroom award, leads customers through a hidden hallway to a beautifully decorated 10-stall bathroom that features flowers, marble, green tile and tropical images. The Encounter Restaurant in the futuristic Theme Building at Los Angeles' LAX Airport has been called everything from bizarre and unique to tacky.

But such flourishes are not essential. What is?

"On the day-to-day operational issues, make sure it's clean, make sure it's well-maintained," Robson says. "Keep checking on it all the time. Guests like to see that checklist on the back of the door that says 'Susie came in and made sure everything was OK at 11:30' or whatever it is. But on the more strategic level, make it part of the experience -- and think about it as part of the experience -- as opposed to just this utilitarian space you have to have by code."

And what about restaurateurs who still don't think about their restrooms? "Think about your restrooms," Brandt-Lee says. "They're more important than one would think. It's like if you were to go into your home. It could be nice and clean but you have those closets that are just filled with junk. That really says who you are, and the bathroom is the exact same thing. The bathroom says that you take the time to make sure that something that is not out in the open and obvious is nice and clean and well maintained. That says a lot about how your kitchen is, and how things are behind the scenes at a restaurant."

Americans, Brandt-Lee says, are "more and more savvy about that, and they're looking for places to be healthy, especially now that health reports and things like that are starting to go online. New York has been doing it for years, where they post [such reports] on restaurant doors."

In Chester County, Brandt-Lee says, officials have for the first time posted all health reports online. "So you can go online and find a lot more information about a restaurant, and people are really shocked at what they're seeing about places that they've been going to for years. Cleanliness is definitely something that is coming more and more under the microscope. And that is just another good tool to make sure that someone coming into your restaurant is going to believe that you are taking the time to make sure that everything you do is very sanitary."