Water glasses in restaurants

How often have you visited a restaurant and found that the water glass smells bad or looks not so clean, has specs or has drying marks? You tell the waiter to get clean glasses or on several occasions, simply drink the water straight from the bottle. Here is the reason why this happens.

First off, what types of glasses are available, what types are used at restaurants and how are they cleaned?

1)      A water glass made of glass:

o   The price of these glasses range from 8 bucks a glass (the basic Yera ones) all the way upto 100 bucks (Ocean) or even more, with several options along the way.

o   The most effective way to clean these is to use a dish-washer. This ensures that the glasses are dry and quite clean and do not smell. Several of the star hotel restaurants and fancier restaurants in India use a dish-washer. But what about the 90% of the stand-alone restaurants?

o   The non-dishwasher method is the following: Used glasses are kept in a glass rack, sent to the washing area and essentially a pipe with hot water is used as a hose and the glasses are clean. Then they are dipped in cold water. Post this, the glasses are wiped with a cloth and placed in a clean glass rack. As you can imagine, the process above is tedious, requires a bit of effort and space (which is sorely missing in most restaurants), require the wiping cloth to be very clean (??) and hence invariably leads the glasses to be cleaned not so properly. The process also requires the glasses to be handled multiple times causing breakage quite often.

o   An easier way to clean is to not clean the glasses at all. Simply shake the rack, fill water, shake it again to remove overflowing water and serve it back to the customers. While seemingly gross, this method is used extensively in banquet style settings with huge volumes and unrealistic service level expectations.

2)      Stainless Steel glasses (technically these can’t be called glasses, but I am ignoring this rule) – These cost the same as the above glasses made of glass, but are easier to clean, less prone to breakage and lasts longer. The shine goes away quite quickly though and impacts the presentation

3)      Acrylic glasses – These are plastic/acrylic glasses which look very close to a real glass, but are less prone to damage and last longer. These cost between INR 50 to INR 150 depending on the quality of the glass. Again the trouble with these is that the glasses lose their shine quickly and start looking old making them not so presentable.

4)      Disposable glasses – These transparent plastic glasses cost between 10 paisa and INR 3 depending on the quality. There are some really nice disposable glasses out there now.

Ask any restaurant owner and chances are that he/she would say that they would love to simply use disposable glasses and get away from the pain of cleaning the glasses, handling breakage, managing the labour needed for this etc. But this option is not viable owing to the customer expectation when they visit a restaurant. The presentation is very poor with disposable glasses, the glasses move around when empty making it not so easy for the waiter to refill the water at the table. Essentially it downgrades the value of a restaurant, especially those with table service. Disposable plastic glasses works in a QSR type setting, especially those restaurants which use a self-service model. Several of the Indian QSRs also provide steel glasses and in some ways the onus of ensuring the final cleaning process is with you – the customer. But for most restaurants offering table service this is not a viable option yet.

Given the above, most restaurants simply buy glasses once every 6 months or so and replace them.