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Now trending: Restaurants offering gender-neutral bathrooms

Many restaurants are ditching signs indicating separate men's and women's restrooms.

October 27, 2016 by Cherryh Cansler — Editor, FastCasual.com

While some states, including California and New York, have passed laws requiring single-occupancy bathrooms to be gender-neutral, a plethora of businesses, including restaurants, are opting to ditch signs indicating separate men's and women's restrooms. Instead, customers are seeing "gender-neutral" signs, according to Refuge Restrooms, which lists every public, all-gender restroom in the United States. The website reported that there are 4,500 such public restrooms in the country, and that number is growing fast.

While many of the signs simply say, "all-gender" or "gender-neutral," some organizations have decided to add a little humor to their signs, aware it is somewhat of a contentious issue, according to Impact-Products, which has a new Personal Care Division manufacturing products specifically for restrooms. It recently uncovered what it described as the Top 5 five gender-neutral signs:

  • Lou or Lulu? Any loo will do (Found in a Goddess and the Baker Restaurant, Chicago)
  • Blokes or Birds Restroom (Seen in a Virgin Hotel in Chicago)
  • We Don't Care (Located in a San Francisco office building)
  • Whichever! (Several U.S. locations)
  • Pointers and Setters (Uncovered at a roadside restaurant stop in Illinois) 

"Whatever the sign, humorous or not, we believe restroom users should always have a positive restroom experience," said Amy Seretsky, product manager at Impact Products. "Clean restrooms, well stocked, including feminine hygiene products and dispensers, are always needed [and] will always be wanted no matter who uses the restroom or what the sign says on the door." 

About Cherryh Cansler

Cherryh Cansler is VP of Events for Networld Media Group and publisher of FastCasual.com. She has been covering the restaurant industry since 2012. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, The Kansas City Star and American Fitness magazine, among many others.

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