Offering Good Restaurant Highchairs Cannot Be This Hard

Every restaurant that welcomes families with small children is sure to have a supply of highchairs for the children who come in. Unfortunately, restaurant managers don't seem to ever go on the Internet and check out what parents are saying about restaurant highchairs. If you can't guess, most of what they say is extremely unflattering. Why should restaurants ruin their good name by putting the children of their guests in danger?

In one post on a parenting website, a mother complains about how unsafe the restaurant highchairs are. The mother goes on to say that at many restaurants these days, the waiter will ask parents if they want to bring their car seat in so that they can put their baby in it, and put the car seat on an upturned highchair. They often offer to do this even when there is a large sticker that warns against doing this kind of thing. Consumer Reports has an article that talks about how restaurant highchairs are well known for the poor condition in which they are maintained.

Not only are they offered to children when their safety restraints are very clearly broken, they are offered to children even when they are horribly dirty (which as anyone knows who's been to a restaurant, can be true). Reports in the Daily Mail in London talk about a study that's been done on restaurant highchairs at dozens of different establishments across the city there. They found that restaurant highchairs were typically far dirtier than public toilet seats.

And this is the furniture that restaurants are happy to offer children.

Clearly, restaurants need to pull themselves together and do the right thing. The first thing that they could do is to buy antimicrobial highchairs. These are chairs that have antimicrobial treatment in the material of the furniture itself. Even if the management does fall behind on its cleaning schedule, the antimicrobial treatment in the chair could take care of things until then.

Elsewhere on the Internet, they tell you that you should have sew a highchair cover at home and bring it with you when you go to a restaurant. Consumer Reports has other kinds of advice. They say that parents should buy a hook-on chair with them when they come to a restaurant.

Restaurant managers need to take note here. When parents trust restaurants so little that they bring their own furniture, it can't be long before they question how the restaurant is competent at all.