40 Red Flags Indicating You Should Immediately Leave The Restaurant You’re At

If the place is at least clean, I’ll pretty much forgive anything and take my hat off to you that you’re keeping the doors open

Adult to teenager employee ratio. I've been around the block and if you walk into a restaurant or coffee shop and the entire staff is 16-20 with one adult to supervise it is a bad sign. I know most restaurants have a majority young people working there, that's not what I'm talking about. If the establishment pays so little that no one with any actual bills to pay can afford to work there it leads to high turn over and an immature staff that generally doesn't give a s**t. Nothing gets cleaned properly because the babysitter(manager) a) can't go behind everyone and do their jobs and b) also doesn't get paid enough to give a s**t.
With coffee shops this can be particularly bad because in my experience health department inspectors have NO CLUE how coffee machinery works or how to check it for cleanliness. It is really easy to make coffee equipment look clean on the outside while it hasn't actually been washed in months or has nasty crusted milk on the inside. If the owners don't give enough of a s**t to pay and keep employees that aren't a revolving door of teenagers, they probably don't care enough about their equipment and your cup of coffee was probably made with nasty, dirty equipment.

Discoloration in certain foods. I some years ago, worked at a banquet center where food was allowed to sit out for hours and then put back in the coolers. This happened with salad dressing and bite-sized desserts that weren’t consumed. The cooks were also ex-Navy guys who smoked while they prepared food. I quit after I was sexually harassed by the owner of the place. Honestly, the only way that s**t hole must have passed health inspection was some major greasing of palms.

I’m also willing to wait for food at places like Subway where employees are using gloves, taking their gloves off every time they finish making a sandwich, and washing their hands frequently.

Any bars with incredibly large/deep ice-tubs. If you're going to have ice in your drink, ask when it was last emptied and cleaned. Deep tubs aren't normally emptied in a busy bar, they'll just have more ice dumped on top. Trouble is, if the tub isn't clean, then bacteria (most notably e-coli) can be present at the bottom. It looks like black or very dark green spots. It's pretty easy to spot against the white inner lining of the tub.

I worked in two large night clubs and it was never cleaned during a normal shut-down at the end of the night because they're so large. I assume that it would normally be done during a deep clean but that depends on the venue.

I don't have ice in my drinks for that exact reason.

Large hotels or resorts that pay utterly s**t wages and treat staff like c**p.

People used to pay tens of thousands for a wedding and not realise anything about what went on behind closed doors. Many staff were on the equivalent of $2/hour, worked 12-14 hours with hardly a single break and few guests ever bothered tipping - so the staff treated their employers and customers with broadly the same contempt.

“Oops, did I drop that on the floor? The five hundred second rule applies!”

“Did it only get stood on the one time? It’s good to go back in.”

“It fell? Pick the fluff out of it and put it back on”.

“Smells funny? Mix it in with some fresh stuff”.

I saw one guy blow his nose into a slice of bread used for the buffet sandwiches.

Dregs of drinks being reused as the foundation of the next drink. Glasses unwashed, wiped over and over again with the same dish towel.

Staff who were obviously ill washing dishes and handling cutlery, crockery etc. Using their sleeve as a handkerchief.

The list is endless.

To be brutally honest - as a 15/16 year old working for nothing and being treated like s**t by snobby customers, I hardly gave a f**k.

So next time you’re at a ‘luxury’ resort, treat the lowly staff more kindly. Because those nice customers were the ones I made sure didn’t get ‘steak a la carpet’.

Your only defence as a customer is your attitude towards the waiter.

If the easy stuff isn’t taken care of the hard stuff has been sliding for days or worse.

Stale bread? Old condiments? Hot cutlery or glasses? These are signs of a dysfunctional back of house.

If they can’t keep the front of the house clean the kitchen is going to be a nightmare.

If I see a bartender touch the tap spout with a glass someone was just drinking from, I immediately leave. That’s, like, common sense sanitation sh*t

Dirty restrooms. I'm not talking about like, a couple paper towels on the floor, and maybe a little bit of water on the counter, I'm talking *dirrrrrrty* bathrooms, a la dirty truckstop gas station- if that's what they let the public see, you probably don't want to know what's going on in the back of house.

Never worked in the restaurant business but my local Panera was a franchised own location. Not run by Panera. I was never a huge fan but would go in maybe once a month on a Saturday morning for a scone and coffee. After they changed owners I went back in and the floors were so sticky. Gave it one more try about a month later. Same thing. Never went back. Called Panera to complain and they said, nothing we can do. It’s a privately owned Panera. Now if the floors are sticky where the customer walks, what’s the kitchen look like?

The staff, they give it away.

You walk over the floors and it feels sticky or slippery, but the staff doesnt care about it, that is a sign, The tables and chairs and windows arent clean, the coffee pot has rings of old dried coffee on the inside. The counter is fatty and has stains that hasnt been wipded down in the last few days or hours.

If you went to their kitchen you will find the chefs working with dirty tools, chopping up your salad on the same place they just cut up cold chicken on. What goes into your dish is just what they have in the fridge that isnt "too bad" yet. 2 weeks old milk but doesnt smell bad, works just fine.

Its rather an attitude among the people working there then anything else, usually this comes from these employees manager who in turn dosent care. Has a sort of "whatever" attitude.

My sister worked in restaurants for about 8 years while she was in college. The horror stories are unforgettable. She even quit two places over their "cleanliness standards" or lack thereof.

* At a nationally-known chain restaurant (like Applebees-tier), they often had problems with homeless people running in and stealing entire trays from the buffet. She said that there were occasions where her manager retrieved the tray from the hobos and simply put it back in the buffet line.
* Another quite famously-known chain restaurant had a notoriously disgusting line cook who would make the cast of "Waiting" look like Mr Clean. His nickname was "Crusty Critter." Imagine someone who hasn't showered in a week or two, has greasy hair, smokes like a freight train, chews, and wears the same clothing day after day... We aren't quite there yet. He apparently used to take bites out of people's food with a fork he left by the grill, then cover up that he had done so. He had been caught multiple times
* First rule of cooking is avoiding cross contamination, right? She said that at every restaurant she ever worked at, including a 4-star place, she witnessed bizarre cases of cross contamination.

As for red flags, ***she said the biggest red flag is the hygiene of the staff***. If the staff are gross, their standards are also likely gross. She said that waitresses and waiters often had to make their own salads for customers, and they NEVER washed their hands after handling dirty dishes, pens, booklets, menus, etc. They'd just reach right into the salad line with their hands and grab away.

Blech.

All the wait staff having a defeated look in their eyes. You can guarantee that the working conditions suck and that owners/managers are not cool, which means they are likely cutting corners back of house and making the wait staff serve things they know they shouldn't.

I worked in a coffeeshop for few years and I went to a different branch to train few people and put the place together but what I found there was more than unbelievable I still have photos and when I arrived there that place shouldn't be serving anything. I sopoose they went back into their old tracks when I left.

Few things you can spot:

Dirty dishes, or the staff have to wash and rub them before they give it to you.

The coffee goes through the lever (if it's the old school coffeemaker) in few seconds or it takes over a minute... Trust me it's gonna be gross. It should take between 20 to 45 seconds depending on the type of coffee you order. This one is more about how much the staff actually cares but the hygiene goes hand in hand with this one. (Might differ in other coffeeshops and I'm not really sure so please feel free to correct me)

They don't wash the container they heat up the milk in every now and then. Again it's on the staff and on how much they care but they should really wash it at least every other use, assuming it's a busy place and the milk doesn't get to dry before they pour some more milk into that.

Dust on shelfs with expository goods, if these are all dusty you don't want to know what it looks like behind the scenes.

Dried syrup on pumps from flavours. Most of them are past the expiration date anyway but it's Okey, except hazelnut flavor that turns to disgusting mush and if you see dried flavor on the pumps just please don't ask for that flavor (And I'm not talking about tiny bit of dried flavor but literally blocked pumps where the staff has to take the pump out and pour it in by hand)

You wont be able to spot most of the other things I can think of but try to take a peek under the coffeemaker sometimes... Most of the times you wont be comming back...

Worked in restaurants for seven years. Casual to mid-scale places. Most of them were very hygienic, but even the best places has problems. Just know that at some point ever restaurant has cleaning failings and you’ll never know.

Another thing from a lifer in brewing and bars / restaurants. If the draft beer tastes funky / off compared to the same beer in a can, the bar isn’t properly maintaining its draft system. That means yeast and bacteria are growing in the lines tainting the beer. Then ask yourself what else aren’t they cleaning.

A decent bar should be cleaning its lines, keg couplers, and taps at least every two weeks.

When they make an old fashioned with lime juice

An all-you-can-eat buffet that's held only once a week, usually on Sundays. In the restaurant where I work, that was how they got rid of the stuff that they couldn't sell on the regular menu.

(PRE-COVID) Watch how servers get ice for your drinks, dipping the glass in an ice bin is a red flag. There is no way someone can dip a glass in an ice bin without ice touching your fingers, even if it is allowed. Another red flag for me is if servers carry away empty drinks with their fingers in the glasses to carry more at one time. If servers are in a hurry, they are definitely wiping their hands off on their apron or towel than take the time to wash their hands every single time they get something on them.

If it’s busy, just go home. Staff are too busy getting out orders to angry customers to wash their hands after collecting plates and glasses etc before they run out the new ones.

I was asked once if I wanted my old fashioned up or on the rocks. I went with a bottled beer