CHICAGO — Richard Warren, manager of the Conway, Ark., facility of Linen King, sees that one of the biggest “headaches” for textile rental companies is that, many times, when a customer goes on a rental program, they “lose all sense of responsibility.”
“If employees use napkins or pillowcases to polish their shoes, it’s OK. If some item appears to be overly soiled, it’s OK to discard it,” he says. “In both cases, that’s the wrong assumption.”
FOOD AND BEVERAGE ISSUES, SOLUTIONS
It’s not just misuse of textiles that Ben Pincus, president, BLC Textiles Inc., Mineola, N.Y., sees as a problem in the food and beverage industry. It’s also non-use.
“For example, what we see as a disturbing trend right now is a lot of the fine-dining establishments are taking the tablecloths off of the table and using their tables, which is very unsanitary and harmful to the end-user,” he says. “We are seeing a shrinking pie in terms of the table linen itself.”
Pincus calls the linen abuses that he sees at restaurants “age-old.” For example, using bar towels to clean grills, using tablecloths to wipe up spills, or putting them on the floor causing concrete stains.
“We’ve seen every type of misuse you can see, but anything that mutilates the linen is abuse,” he says.
Pincus sees textile use education as difficult when it comes to the restaurant market.
“It’s everyone’s responsibility, ours included, to try to control textile costs from the raw cost perspective and from the life of the product … when people are confident they’re getting full use of the product, they’ll definitely go with the best product they can get their hands on,” he says.
“The companies that use the linen products really need to educate their employees about the money that is wasted through carelessness,” Warren says. “In safety training, you have to preach and preach and preach, but when it starts to take traction, the accidents go down. Proper linen use must be approached in the same manner.”
The programs that BLC Textiles has created include slicks, posters and other materials to help train the end-users on the do’s and don’ts of linens. However, Pincus finds that many in the industry think it’s a waste of time to try to train them—that the efforts fall on deaf ears.
“My feeling is that the abuses that happen are mainly contained in the kitchen. If that’s the case, then giving people slicks and other items they can add to pay stubs, and making the posters to hang on the wall in the kitchen, reinforce the message,” he says.
On the textile rental company side, Pincus thinks education also falls on the drivers, account managers and service departments to keep sharing that linen loss and destruction is everyone’s responsibility.
One method that Pincus has found to be helpful for education is for the customer to see the result of linen abuse.
“If you can bring soiled linen back that is abused to a restaurant, or a customer of any variety, and show them the abuse, sometimes that can help,” he says.
In the end, Pincus says linen misuse and abuse and customer education is a difficult road, one that’s definitely an uphill battle all of the time.
“It’s a multi-tentacled type of approach,” he says. “I think you have to try everything, and then, at the end of the day, if abuse is so heavy that the account isn’t profitable, laundries have to take a close examination of that. Sometimes that’s a tough pill to swallow, but if somebody is heavily abusing the product and you’re not recouping your costs very well, or if they don’t pay for the losses and/or the product in general, it’s time to examine whether they’re worth continuing.”
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