Toilet Barometer Survey

Print this article | Send to Colleague

British restaurant guests do not have a very high opinion of the restaurant industry and restaurant hygiene, according to this year's "Barometer of Public Washroom Opinion" from SCA’s Tork hygiene products (Dunstable, Bedfordshire, U.K.). No fewer than 65% of U.K. diners have left a restaurant in recent years because it had a grubby appearance, while 88% suspect that if the toilet is dirty, the kitchen will be dirty too.

A total of 500 U.K. respondents and 3,500 other Europeans took part in the survey. Around 84% of respondents believe that kitchen staff do not wash their hands before preparing food. Worse still, one in five respondents believes that cooks and other kitchen staff pick up food that has fallen on the floor and use it for cooking.

U. . diners are most sceptical about the hygiene at local pubs and fast food restaurants, while hotel restaurants and upper-end pubs received significantly better scores. For visitors to perceive that a restaurant is clean, it is important that the premises are tidy (66%), that the toilet is clean (22%), and that you can see into the kitchen (12%).

Restaurant and workplace toilets are among the washrooms that respondents prefer to visit, while they prefer to avoid pubic toilets and train toilets.

The "Barometer of Public Washroom Opinion" is a regular annual activity conducted by Tork to spotlight hygiene in connection with the World Toilet Day. This year's survey focused on how the public perceives hygiene in restaurants. Conducted for Tork by Netigate, the survey was conducted in eight European countries. The results were fairly similar whether the respondents lived in Sweden, U.K., France, Germany, Finland, Poland, Belgium, or the Netherlands.