Boost Guest Satisfaction with Well-Designed Bar Bathrooms: Tips for Bar Owners

This week we're going to be discussing , probably one of the topics that no one has actually asked for but that I think is really really important , and it's something that is not sexy at all , it's not something that a lot of people that consult and coach in the bar business talk about , but it is absolutely fundamentally to your success and that is your bathroom .

And I think too often bathrooms get kind of set to the side as kind of an afterthought , but really bathrooms are a very , very important part of your guest experience .

They're a very important part of how your guests view your establishment and in many ways , how people view your bathrooms and how clean your bathrooms are will dictate what they think about everything in your bar . If you have clean bathrooms , they'll assume you have a clean kitchen . If you have dirty bathrooms , they'll assume you have a dirty kitchen .

So both the design of the bathrooms , how you maintain and manage the bathrooms and , more importantly , how you clean the bathrooms all have a huge impact on the guest experience . That's often overlooked . One of the places that this gets overlooked the most is when we think of dive bars a lot of times , especially the lower end of the spectrum .

So our dives , our neighborhood bars , those sorts of places . We often think about men as our main customer base , and one of the failure points of many bars is that they fail to realize that women in general will help bring in men , and so you're more successful when you attract more women , and one of the things women notice the most is your bathrooms .

Bathrooms are absolutely key to everything . You can't maximize your success unless you have bathrooms that work and that are good for everyone that's coming into your establishment . Our whole time today we're going to spend on bathrooms .

First we're going to talk a little bit about bathroom design , then we'll talk a little bit about cleaning bathrooms , and then we'll end up with some additional notes on bathrooms that I think are important . So , when it comes to bathroom design , the first thing is that you have to be aware of the codes in the area where you are located .

Now we have people that listen to this all over the world , so obviously those codes are going to be very different in New York versus Indiana , where I am , versus Alabama versus England , versus Australia versus Poland . All those places will have different codes for bathrooms .

But obviously , anytime you design a bathroom , anytime you design anything in your bar , you need to make sure you're meeting the local codes , whatever those may be . In the US , one of the big challenges when it comes to bathrooms is meeting the Americans with Disabilities Act , the ADA .

There are very specific requirements on how your bathrooms have to be set up to be accessible , wheelchair , turnaround sizes , door minimum widths , all sorts of things and you need to be aware of those when you're designing a bathroom .

Actual regulations aside , because those are going to be individually specific to your area and you'll have to reach out to someone local to discuss those .

When you look at designing a bathroom , it's very important to realize that your bathroom needs to be at the nicer end of everything in your bar , and that's because , as I mentioned earlier , women are attracted to nice bathrooms .

They're going to see how clean they are , they're going to see how nice they are , and that's going to give them a better overall feeling of your establishment and make them want to come in warm . How nice your bathroom is really matters , and it should be at the nicer end .

I can tell you , with my bar , one of the best things I ever did was remodel all my bathroom and when I did , they were a little bit nicer than even the dining room . In some ways they were on par with the bars a whole .

But having that nicer bathroom got a lot of attention , got a lot of people to notice and you have no idea how many times I heard your bathrooms are so nice , your bathrooms are so clean and that was a reason that people came in .

And when we're looking at bathroom design , there are certain pieces of equipment that all bathrooms will have and we can start with sinks .

Sinks are going to be in pretty much any bathroom and what you see in a lot of bars , especially older bars , where they have single toilet bathrooms where only one person can use the bathroom at a time , door locks and everybody just waits in the hall . You see a lot of pedestal sinks .

And I will tell you right now the worst thing that you can do in a bar is have a pedestal sink . And when I bought my bar at first , there were pedestal sinks in all the bathrooms . And the problem with a pedestal sink is this they're fundamentally wall hung , so this works for any wall hung sink . Really you should avoid .

The problem with a wall hung sink is it's sitting on brackets . Those brackets , if the sink gets bumped backwards and up , can cause the sink to come off those brackets , come crashing down to the ground and maybe it breaks . Maybe it doesn't . Maybe your plumbing breaks , maybe it doesn't .

A wall hung sink , a pedestal sink , has a huge potential to fall off the wall . And I know what you're thinking . You're thinking I have a pedestal sink in my house . I've never had a problem with it falling off the wall . Sinks aren't just going to jump by themselves . Why would it fall off the wall ? Well , the answer is pretty simple .

Bathrooms are one of the only private places in a bar , especially if you have single toilet bathrooms with a door that locks to the hallway . Two people can go in there , they can lock that door .

Things will happen and when people have sex in your bathroom , if someone's sitting on the sink , there is probably going to be some thrusting up and back that can cause that sink to fall off the wall . And that's the problem with pedestal sinks .

Pedestal sinks are not what I would call sex proof and in most bar bathrooms at one point or another , even if they have multiple stalls in them and it seems like not a great place for privacy , I promise you , in a bar , people are going to find somewhere to have sex and it's probably going to be your bathroom , so you need sinks that can withstand people

having sex on them , and so that means you need a vanity . You need something under your sink that's holding it there , not something wall hung that can be knocked off . And also , if you're going to do like a counter with a sink in the counter that's floating , be careful with that .

Everything in a bathroom needs to be able to withstand people having sex on it , otherwise you're going to have a lot of damage Along those lines .

If you do have pedestal sinks and you're like , hey , I really don't want to replace my sink , something that's easy to do that's not that much money is to replace any hard plumbing so think copper pipes things that do not move are not flexible with stainless steel hose that is flexible .

And the great part about that is , if someone does have sex on your pedestal sink , if it does fall off the wall which again happened to me more than once and happened when I had pedestal sinks .

That happened about once every three , four months I'd lose a sink off the wall , and the most tubing that is flexible allows that sink to fall off and not break your plumbing , which is really important because you don't want your plumbing to go bad every time someone has sex on your sink , but so think vanities . Vanities are the best option .

Plus , you get a little bit of storage under them for cleaning supplies , things like that , and it's not going to fall off the wall when someone has sex on it . Let's talk toilets , because that's the next big piece of equipment in a bathroom . It's probably the most important piece of equipment in the bathroom is your toilet .

There are two ways to go on this , and it really depends to me on what type of establishment you are , and it's also going to depend somewhat on your local regulations when it comes to how much water goes in a toilet . For those of you from outside the United States , if you've never been here , you would be amazed at how much water is in our toilets .

It's far above what you see in Europe and most of the world . Now , newer regulations in America are bringing us closer to that low flow , low water toilet situation . And if you're talking low environmental impact toilets , those are never the cheap ones , and there's a company out there called Toto . They make phenomenal toilets .

That's what I have in my house , to be honest , because I like them . They're some of the best toilets you can buy . They don't clog as much as most other standard toilets do . But the thing is they're ? fricking expensive . And in a bar sometimes people are going to break your toilets , and I'll tell you a story about that in a second .

Because you're going how the hell do you break a toilet ? I'll tell you . But you either go towards the high end , the Toto , the low water , low ability to clog , really nice toilets that are easier to clean . They're phenomenal .

Or you go the other direction and it's the cheapest thing you can buy at Home Depot as a toilet , because you know someone's going to screw it up , you know someone's going to break it , you know your seat's going to break . You know all those things are going to happen . So why spend too much money on the toilet itself ?

As long as it looks nice , you're fine . For my bars I always went towards the low end . It was whatever was on sale at Home Depot . When I needed a toilet was the toilet I bought . Now again , I'm sure you're wondering why do I worry about my toilet break ? Well , let me tell you a story . One night I'm in my bar .

It's a Friday night , we're pretty busy , we have karaoke going on , it's more or less a packed house . There are these two girls together . They were young , not very large girls by any means , and the two of them might have weighed a little more than a couple hundred pounds . These were small girls and they go in the bathroom to get it .

Well , they're in there for about 15 minutes and this line is building and we're like what the hell ? So one of my bouncers goes over and he knocks on the door and they say , hey , we'll be out in a minute , no indication that anything is going wrong .

Well , about three minutes later , as I was watching the bathroom door to see when these girls came out because again we had a line building and it was causing an issue with other people being able to use the bathroom these girls come running out . Now I'm telling you they were covered head to foot in water , completely soaked in water .

We're going how the hell are these girls covered in water like this ? This doesn't make any sense . And they didn't stop . They didn't say a word . They went straight from the bathroom right out the front door and we're never seen again .

Well , we go into the bathroom and what has happened is somehow the toilet has been ripped off , the bolts has fallen over on its side , the toilet bowl is cracked , the tank you know the back part of the toilet that holds the water , that refills it is cracked and one of the water lines has come out of the toilet itself and it's just squirting water all over

the bathroom . Luckily , we were able to . It didn't hurt the shut off valves . We were able to shut it off . I don't know how those girls did it . I don't understand how those two could have had the force to pull that toilet off its bolts and shatter it completely , but they did

so . You will have situations again bathrooms or rooms you can't see , bathrooms or places that are private , where people can do pretty much anything and get away with it , and so you could have a toilet ripped off the bolts and not know why .

That's a good reason to have cheaper toilets , especially in your neighborhood bars , your dive bars , places where a fancier toilet isn't going to make a difference to your guests . Let's be honest if it's a clean toilet , if it looks good , most people are not going to judge you and go oh my God , you have a cheap brand toilet from Home Depot .

You don't have this fancy Toto toilet that I see other places . So it's really not a big deal if you have a cheaper toilet , but be aware that people can rip them out of the ground , that sometimes spending less money on something that you know people can break is a good idea . Along the conversation with toilets , let's talk real quickly about dividers .

If you have multiple stalls Now in the United States we have these dividers that have all these spaces and gaps around them you can see under the bottom there's a crack that goes up the side that you can basically see everything going on in under that divider or inside the divided area If you try to look .

Now , for those of you who don't know architecturally , that's kind of a Frank Lloyd Wright thing . He's the person we can blame for that , while the rest of the world has much tighter seals on these spaces . You can go either way . I'm actually not a fan . I love Frank Lloyd Wright .

I hate the way he designed toilet dividers , so I tend to like ones that are a lot more closed off , with a lower bottom . To him , it just affords people more privacy , it's less chances of people being creepy and it's kind of a nicer experience for your guests . But you can go either way there .

But whatever dividers you have , you need to make sure that they're cleanable and that they're made of materials that are non porous . Non porous materials are huge in a bathroom .

Nothing in your bathroom should be able to absorb any liquid , because if you think about what happens in a bar bathroom , not only do people normally go to the bathroom than that people will do things like pee all over the bathroom or poop all over the bathroom or puke all over the bathroom or bleed all over the bathroom .

If there's a bodily fluid that exists , it will be in your bathroom at one point or another . So you want to make sure any divider you have anything you have in your bathroom essentially is non porous .

And after toilets , we obviously need to discuss urinals , and urinals are relatively simple and straightforward , but there are some things to be aware of when it comes to urinals and urinal maintenance . The first thing with urinals is they will clog .

They clog actually pretty easily and what you will find is , depending on the frequency they're flushed , how they're flushed , all of that urine has calcium in it and you will have calcium deposits that grow in your urinals and those have to be dealt with on a regular basis .

So if you have one urinal , if you have 15 urinals , it doesn't matter , but you need to have a plumber , someone that you trust , that can come in and do some maintenance on those every once in a while . Generally speaking , to get rid of the calcium deposits . Is it some sulfuric acid ?

Maybe you want to snake down it and pull out anything that is a little bit more solid , but that will take care of it , and if you don't do that , your urinals will clog , because urinals clog just from normal use over time .

Urinals are absolutely more of a pain in the ass than toilets actually to maintain , but if you get someone in there on a regular basis doing the preventative maintenance that's needed , running some sulfuric acid down it , you're really good . Now why do I say , get someone to do it rather than run sulfuric acid down yourself ?

Well , I don't know how many of you guys have actually played with sulfuric acid . It is some nasty , nasty stuff . It has really toxic fumes . It will eat through your clothes . It will eat through your skin . It will eat through your pipes if you don't use it properly . So that's where a really good plumber can come in handy .

Now , if you get lucky enough to have a plumber that's a regular that can teach you how to do it and help you out great , I did end up going that route . But if you don't have a plumber , if you don't have someone trained on how to do that sulfuric acid , you're kind of in trouble .

The other thing with urinals is because the piping on it , the drain on it , is a little bit smaller than what you can see on a toilet , they tend to clog a lot . And they clog because people put things down them .

Normally it's paper towels , normally it's tickets to I think of all the things we've pulled out of urinals over there tickets to movies , tickets to concerts , hats , pieces of clothing . Don't ask me how , but my absolute favorite of all time I had a urinal that was backed up and I had a plumber , my normal plumber . He was in the bar that day .

He starts messing with it and he sticks a snake down there . He's like there's something hardened here . I don't know what it is . Well , he ends up wrestling with this thing for about a half hour because he just wanted to know what it was . He was just kind of myth .

This guy was a hospital plumber , like he'd seen it all , but actually ended up fishing something out of my urinal that you never seen before , which happened to be a top set of dentures . So evidently the night before someone had gone into my Men's restroom , puked in the urinal , puked the teeth out of their mouth and then flushed their teeth down the toilet .

Not sure how that happens , but again , this is why I'm talking about bathrooms , because crazy stuff will happen in your bathrooms . Make sure you have a plumber , make sure you're maintaining your urinals especially . Obviously , toilets can get some maintenance from time to time too , but the urinal maintenance is something a lot of people overlook .

That will cause you to have a lot of downtime on your urinals that you don't otherwise need . Now , the last piece of Design , the kind of equipment in a bathroom , is your walls , and why talk about walls in this ? True of the floor too .

We have to go back to what I said earlier about never have a non-porous or always have non-porous surface Sometimes never have a porous surface , don't have a surface that liquid can soak into . So that means that you're gonna need some sort of impermeable barrier that goes up the wall at least four or five feet . And why four or five feet ?

Because , yes , people will Especially men next to a urinal will pee way further up your wall than you think they would . They just . But you need a Wall that liquid cannot get through , especially by your urinal . And that's because pee in general is relatively caustic . It's not a Substance , that just is water and it doesn't hurt things .

It can cause a lot of damage .

So in my bar , when I was redoing my bathrooms , one of the things that we ended up doing was tearing out the wall that separated the two bathrooms . Because once we Started working in there and we were gonna put tile on the wall so that rather than have drywall or , you know , concrete board , we had tile that went up .

We did floor to ceiling just so that no one could pee above it . And when we went to tile that and do that , we realized that the wall wasn't quite stable . So we ended up ripping out the sheet rock or the drywall , and what we found behind the drywall is one of the craziest things I've ever seen .

It happened that because the wall was adjacent to the urinal and this had been in this bar this way for probably about 20 years as people were using the urinal , some pee was bouncing out of the urinal and hitting that wall and it soaked through the drywall over the years , probably partially because people just peed on the wall again another story .

But it had soaked through that drywall and when we pulled the drywall out this was a Standard commercial building in the US . It had been built with metal studs . It's a non load bearing wall . They were the cheap aluminum you know , kind of I beam looking studs in the wall .

What turns out that along about four or five feet of the wall closest to the urinal , there were no studs at the bottom the drywall was actually holding the entire wall up and what had happened was all that pee over the years had seeped into that drywall , gotten to the stud itself and actually corroded it away .

So where there should have been a stud there was nothing and it was all because that wall had a permeable surface and P got behind that wall and then ate through all the metal , and when I say all of it .

It wasn't that far up , but again , about four or five inches of those studs were missing at the bottom Because of the abuse they had sustained , because it wasn't behind a sealed , impermeable wall . Now , with impermeable walls , you can do tile floor to ceiling .

That , I think , looks aesthetically great , and there are some great tile options that are not that expensive . There's some tile options that are hideously expensive . It all depends on which way you want to go . But you can also use things like sheet metal .

If you want to have a little more industrial or grunge type look , you can use Forget the name of it right now , it's not my head but that white plastic material that you use in commercial kitchens .

That works great too , but you just need something that's going to create a barrier that water cannot get through , because you will have damage Inside your wall potentially if bodily fluids can get into your drywall . So now that kind of covers the design part of this .

Now let's talk a little bit about the cleaning of bathrooms and one of the things with bathrooms . Again , people will judge the cleanliness of your kitchen , of your entire establishment , based upon how clean your bathroom is , and that's why it's absolutely essential that your bathrooms are as clean as you can make them .

So that means you need to be cleaning those bathrooms at least once a day , maybe twice a day , and then you need to be checking up on them on a regular basis . My rule was always that I tried to especially when it was really busy check the bathrooms every couple hours .

If it was slower , maybe I check them once or twice in a whole shift , but especially on my busier nights I was checking those bathrooms every hour or two , both to make sure that they were clean and that there were supplies in there . Again , I found everything you can imagine bodily , fluid wise over the years in the bathrooms .

So checking that they were clean was very important to maintain that good experience for my guests , and so you definitely want to make sure you do that now . There are a lot of different opinions on what you should use to clean bathrooms and Personally it's a bit old-school and not everybody agrees with me on this . But personally I like bleach .

It kills everything , regardless of what fluids were in there . It's not gonna contaminate anything else . It's not gonna cause any issues for people . Bleach works great . You can use any other sort of disinfectant you want , but there is something about bleach that's a little bit magic . And that magic is that when people smell bleach , they think clean .

It's something that in most people , is just ingrained in the back of their head bleach equals clean . That smell of bleach is Related to cleanliness .

So if you mop your bathroom floors with bleach and we would mop the floors , the walls , the toilet , the sink , all of it we would use cleaners right , toilet cleaners on the toilet , we would use sink cleaners on the sink , but we would also wipe everything down with a very I should say very diluted Solution of bleach water every day , just to make sure that

there was no chance of anything in there that was potentially dangerous and because it gave us that smell . And one thing we noticed Early in the day when it smelled like bleach , people like oh my god , your bathrooms are so clean .

So my Cook , who was also the guy that did the cleaning in the morning , had this great idea one day says you know , I'm gonna do , I'm gonna take a Like a magic eraser or just some white sponge you had , so I'm gonna put that in bleach and we'll stick it behind the toilet . So we always had a in every bathroom behind every toilet .

We always had this Sponge that just had bleach on it , and you would be amazed at how well that worked in making people Feel like our bathrooms were cleaner than they actually were or I mean they were hideously clean , but it increased their sensation of cleanliness because when they went in there they smelled bleach .

Obviously , there was no wet bleach anywhere but a sponge you couldn't see on the back of the toilet . There was bleach , and that made a difference to folks . Interestingly enough , a few years later I was Working at a country club for a little bit and we were having some people complain about the bathrooms .

I went to the guy that was running man , is it human ? Try this put a sponge with some bleach on it behind the toilets . Nobody else see it . They'll think it's amazing and it worked there too . So it really is true . The smell of bleach makes people think clean and you can fake that smell , which is a little sponge behind a toilet that no one ever sees .

Now , in addition to that , you do need some kind of air freshener .

Right , bleach is not going to work entirely as an air freshener for a bathroom , so you need something there that is Going to help the room , and if you're in the United States you use a towel company , say Sintas , and you those big guys or small local ones , they will all sell some sort of air freshener .

If you can get something that releases some sort of spray on a regular basis , that is great , or on a motion detector , even better . But you need something that's going to also help with the smells in your bathroom , because obviously bathroom smells are not great . They're not appealing , they're not appetizing , they don't make people want to eat and drink more .

So you need an air freshener on top of the bleach if you're doing the bleach thing . The other thing with bathrooms and this is the most annoying thing and anyone that's eaten out and had this Happen to them , absolutely no you have to make sure they say stock all the time . There always needs to be in the bathroom what the guests needs to use the bathroom .

When they don't have that , they get upset , they get bothered . It makes it seem like you're not as on top of things as you may or may not me , but the impression is that you aren't paying attention , that you don't know what's going on .

So you have to make sure that your bathrooms are stocked every time someone uses it , and that's a another reason why you need to check your bathrooms regularly to make sure that you have everything stocked . Now a few final notes on bathrooms before we wrap it up for the week .

One thing that happens in bathrooms is that a lot of stuff will get left behind in them . Now , some of these things will be because people just forgot them . Some of these things will be because people use them and don't want them anymore , especially nowadays in the United States . You might find a needle in your bathroom .

You might find condoms in your bathroom , condom wrappers , those sorts of things . None of it's good , all of it's gross , but people will leave things behind . What's a more specific situation ? That probably won't happen to most of you , but if you're in the US and you're in the Midwest or the South parts of the West , this is definitely possible .

It is on two separate occasions in my bar , I found a gun in the bathroom , and for those of you that are from different parts of the world or different parts of the US , finding a gun in a bathroom must sound absolutely crazy , but where I am , a lot of people carry firearms and because they carry firearms , they carry them on their hip Very common when

someone goes to the bathroom , they're going to set their firearm on the tank of the toilet behind them , use the bathroom , pull their pants back up , throw that gun back on their hip . A few times they forgot to do that , and so that's another reason to check your bathrooms .

Obviously , stray firearms in the bathroom is not something that you want , so just be mindful of the fact that there are possibilities of people leaving anything in your bathroom , and that's another reason you have to check them on a regular basis .

It also is potentially you know whether we're talking needles or firearms it's a potential safety concern security concern for you and your other guests and can lead to a lot of bad situations . So you need to make sure , for that reason as well , you're checking up on your bathrooms on a regular basis .

And a final note and there are a lot of different ways we can go with this and frankly , it depends a lot on your concept but be careful about advertising signage in your bathrooms for a couple of reasons . One , if if you're putting up paper signage like pieces of paper on a board or pieces of paper taped to the wall and it can look really tacky .

The bathrooms are humid environments , right , there's a lot of water flowing around and because of that , paper is going to absorb that water and that means that those papers are going to look really , really bad .

Your posters will not last in bathrooms well , and as soon as they start to look bad , as soon as you start to see the corners turning and the paper starts to crinkle and things like that , again it's devaluing the experience your guest is having in your bathroom and that's not what you want .

So make sure that if you're going to do any signage in there , that you're doing it right , that you're doing it classy , and then that's on the list of things you check to make sure that guests don't have a worse experience because of what you put in your restroom trying to sell things to . Personally , I think bathroom signage just ends up being tacky .

I don't think that's the right place to advertise to a guest . Now , I know a lot of you are thinking well , a guy at a urinal , you put something in front of his face , he's going to read it . That's absolutely true .

But again , I think there are better ways to communicate to your guests rather than trying to communicate with them while they are using the restroom . So with that , hopefully you guys have enjoyed this episode . I know it's a little different . I know bathrooms are not a topic that a lot of people cover . They're not something that's sexy .

They're not something that's interesting . It's not fun like cocktails . It's not the business importance necessarily on top of people's minds , like cost percentages and things like that . But bathrooms are absolutely essential to your success . They're absolutely essential to how people view of art .

They are one of the key things that , if you get it right , will cause you to get more repeat business , will cause people to have a better overall feeling about your establishment , really is important and it really is worth your time to think through and to dial in that experience , that design and make sure that you have bathrooms that can be easily cleaned ,

that are not going to get destroyed by people if they're having sex or doing whatever they're doing in your bathroom , and that look is good , if not just a little bit better than the rest of your establishment . A few more notes for you all before we head out for the week . One is , if you have not had a chance , head over to Facebook .

Look up Bar Business Nation . We have a community of bar owners there that is growing all the time , where we can ask questions , interact . I post some stuff there from time to time , but really it's to make a platform for bar owners to talk with other bar owners and to use our collective knowledge to make everyone more successful .

If you haven't had a chance , head over to Facebook . Join Bar Business Nation . Also , make sure , check out the show notes . If the book how to Make Top Shelf Profits in the Bar Business my book it is out , we have it on Amazon . It's Kindle Audible for the audio book or you can get paper back or hardcover copies . Check that out .

There's a wealth of knowledge in there . It actually has 75 separate short chapters that are very easy to read and digest , two of which are devoted to bathrooms , because that's how much I like bathrooms . Go check out the book . It is a great read , as always . If you need anything , if you have questions , head over to the website barbusinesspodcastcom .

You can schedule a coaching strategy call there where we can chat or just ask questions , because I am always willing to talk to people . One of my big goals yes , like everyone else , I am in business to make money , not lose money , but one of my big goals is just to help other bar owners .

I think that there's not enough resources , there's not enough experience , there's not enough ways that we can all share information that really allow us to make our industry better and to be more successful . If there's anything you ever need , check out the website Bar Business Podcast . There's a bunch of ways to contact me there or give me a call 812-994-2202 .

That's my office number . I'd love to talk with you guys . On that note , have a great week and we will talk again later .