"What Restaurants Do You Refuse To Go To And Why?" (30 Answers)

The CDC estimates that around 48 million people or 1 in 6 Americans get sick from foodborne diseases each year. Of those, 128k are hospitalized and around 3k individuals lose their lives. This is why it is so vital to maintain high hygiene standards everywhere: from farms and silos to warehouses, grocery stores, and kitchens.

Growing, storing, cooking, and serving food responsibly can prevent people from getting ill. Labeling and storing groceries properly, as well as washing your hands and keeping the kitchen clean is about much more than listening to what your manager tells you: it can literally save lives.

It’s essential to keep in mind that no matter the restaurant or chain, the quality of service can vary a lot depending on the location, staff, and time of day. Just because someone has had an awful experience at a particular fast-food restaurant doesn’t necessarily mean that all establishments in the chain are awful. That’s why it’s important to look at the quality of the food and service, as well as the hygiene standards in more than one location.

Of course, this doesn’t make it okay to let standards slip anywhere: your customers certainly deserve to be treated with respect. If you got bad food poisoning or saw truly disgusting behavior during your meal, your experience is certainly a bad one. The establishment isn’t entitled to your return patronage.

However, what this means is that people tend to focus on the negatives rather than the positives and there’s always a broader picture. For instance, an otherwise respectful company might have issues with a few groups of demotivated, untrained, and mismanaged employees at a few key locations. It’s up to the business to identify these issues and solve them as soon as possible.

That might mean offering employees proper training and incentives to maintain high hygiene and service standards. Or it might take opportunities for growth, a fair(er) wage, and a few personal heart-to-heart conversations to figure out what’s going on.

Though a good manager will know how to motivate most employees, there are bound to be some bad apples who don’t care about their jobs or their customers. In some fringe cases, you may need to let someone go.

But that shouldn’t be your first response. If standards are slipping, there are usually deeper problems than just a few unruly servers and line cooks.