Restaurant employees pouring water: Think before you clink

Restaurants are opening their doors as coronavirus-related regulations are loosening in Modesto, across California and in several other states. As these openings occur, restaurant employees must help prevent the spread of disease by keeping pitcher spouts from physically contacting the rims of diners’ cups as they pour beverages.

Certain germs are able to spread from surface to surface when there is physical contact, such as when a pitcher’s spout clinks one diner’s cup and then another diner’s cup and so on, increasing the germ spread among diners within restaurants.

Faced with uncertainty in public health and safety, restaurant employees should minimize the risk of exposure. Educating restaurant workers to pour beverages while holding pitcher spouts above the rims of cups is a simple solution to an overlooked problem.

You might be asking yourself what you can do, either as a restaurant worker or diner, to address this issue. It can be resolved by raising awareness, promoting education, and encouraging discussion about changing behaviors.

Restaurant owners, managers, and employees must employ updated methods that minimize the spread of disease with each pour, such as holding pitcher spouts above the rims of cups. I have noticed pitcher spouts clinking rims and have shared my concern about the potential spread of disease. Employees from various restaurants have informed me that they were trained to pour beverages with pitcher spouts touching rims to minimize splash.

Beyond simply holding pitcher spouts above rims, there are a couple of relatively easy methods that the restaurant industry can practice. Restaurants can offer straws, preferably biodegradable, and ask diners to remove their straw from their cup before having their beverage refilled.

It is important to acknowledge that despite extensive awareness and education, pitcher spouts are still going to accidentally touch used cups’ rims. Assuming that this happens, restaurants can utilize the preventive measure of frequently washing their beverage pitchers to disinfect them more often and thus minimize the number of accumulated germs on a given pitcher spout at a certain time.

Doctor Oz’s “Dirty Secrets Restaurants Don’t Want You to Know” states that water pitchers are sometimes only washed once a day. As a result, I suggest that increasing the frequency of pitcher washing at any establishment, regardless of how often they currently wash their pitchers, will reduce the spread of germs via pitcher spouts.

The public’s knowledge of the spread of disease by beverage pitchers physically contacting multiple used cups enables us to speak up when we see this happening. By politely communicating your concern with your server when it is observed that they are clinking pitcher spouts with the rim of your cup while refilling your beverage, you can explain the reason for your concern and ask for a fresh cup that has not been touched by a pitcher spout.

Until further scientific investigation has occurred, I firmly believe that it is important that we hedge our bets and practice this safety measure in dining establishments to minimize the unintentional risk of spreading germs in such a manner. Keep the spout out, and think before you clink.