For most of the last 20 years, my work life has been on the road. When I started this streak in 1991 I learned something pretty quickly. “Mark Out The Clean Restrooms”.
In the early 90’s Starbucks was just beginning to pick up steam. They weren’t yet common in the areas I worked. In those days I had to plot out where the great restrooms were from town to town.
On my way to Coalinga I could trust the Harris Ranch Restaurant. Costco…always stellar. Target was usually better than Wal-Mart. In and Out Burger was usually better than McDonalds and so on. That’s too bad… I am reasonably certain Ray Kroc insisted on cleaner restrooms while he was in charge.
Today it’s usually pretty easy. On the whole, I can depend on Starbucks to deliver consistently clean restrooms with its now famous coffee.
I know this brings them extra business. In my case, I feel guilty using the restroom without buying something. Usually I do, even if I’m not thirsty or hungry. But even if everyone doesn’t suffer the same guilt pangs I do, a clean restroom still brings in business. And maybe just as important, a dirty one drives business away. I marked those out to.
Tom Peters, in his book The Little Big Things puts clean restrooms as number 1 on his list of 163 things a business should pay attention to. Tom writes:
“I usually fly to my next seminar in the Great City of Wherever from Logan Airport. The trip form Tinmouth, Vermont, to Boston passes through Gill, Massachusetts. It’s exactly halfway, the 87 mile mark on my odometer – hence, the perfect place for a pit stop. With choices aplenty, I am nonetheless firm in my habit of stopping at the Wagon Wheel Country Drive-In. It’s in fact, a smallish coffee shop-diner. The food, including the fresh muffins that are about a foot away as you enter (typically at dawn’s early light, in my case) is boffo. The attitude is boffo, too. But make no mistake, my custom is well and truly earned, three or four times a month by…
the restroom!
It’s clean-to-sparkling. (Come to think of it, despite the invariably crowded shop, I have never seen even the tiniest scrap of paper on the bathroom floor.) Fresh flowers are the norm. And best of all, there is a great multi-generational collection of family pictures that cover all the walls; rushed though I typically am, I invariably spend an extra minute examining one or another, smiling at a group photo from a local company dinner, or some such, circa 1930 I’d guess.
To me, a clean and attractive and even imaginative loo is the best…
“We Care”
sign in a retail shop or professional office- and (Attention! Attention! Attention!) it goes double when it comes to employee restrooms!
So…
Step #1: Mind the restrooms!”
Tom does such a great job noticing and writing about the nuances of what makes a business great. And I’m totally with him on this. A great business starts with clean restrooms. My dad got this as a 19 year old. Dad was an entrepreneur straight out of the shoot. He was a gas station owner at age 19 before he entered the building game at the ripe old age of 23. My first days on the job as a teenager growing up in the family construction business began with Dad waxing eloquently on “the art” of digging a footing for concrete. Dad saw art in the most menial tasks. When he had the gas station, he cleaned the restroom every hour whether it needed it or not!
So in conclusion… thank you Starbucks! You’ve made my life better in dozens of ways over the last decade. But one of the most meaningful for this road warrior, is dependably clean restrooms.
How is your business doing in the restroom department?
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