Walk into many pubs, cafés, bars or restaurants today and you may find touchless flushing toilets, automatic taps, motion-sensor hand dryers and even doors that glide open without anyone touching a handle.
It all sounds wonderfully futuristic and hygienic.
And then comes the soap dispenser.
The one thing every single person in the room must physically touch with potentially dirty hands before washing them.
It is one of the great modern contradictions of public washroom design.
Businesses spend thousands fitting sensor-operated toilets and taps in an attempt to create a cleaner, more professional environment, only to install a manual soap pump right in the middle of the process. It rather defeats the point.
Think about it logically.
The flush is touchless because nobody wants to touch a button used by hundreds of strangers.
The tap is touchless because people do not want to contaminate surfaces after washing their hands.
Yet before any cleaning can even begin, customers are expected to press a soap dispenser that has potentially been handled all day long by people arriving with dirty hands.
From a hygiene point of view, it makes very little sense.
In some restaurant toilets, the soap dispenser can end up being the dirtiest object in the entire room simply because everybody touches it before they wash their hands. In busy venues, especially during weekend service, football matches, concerts or holiday periods, that is a lot of contact.
Customers notice these things too.
People are far more hygiene-aware than they used to be. The pandemic changed attitudes permanently. Many customers now actively appreciate venues that make genuine efforts to improve cleanliness and reduce unnecessary contact points.
That is why the half-finished approach feels so odd.
A fully touchless washroom experience is no longer difficult or prohibitively expensive. Automatic soap dispensers are widely available, battery-powered units are simple to install, and many are surprisingly affordable even for independent venues.
For restaurants, pubs and hotels, consistency matters.
If you are advertising modern hygiene standards, then the customer journey should make sense from beginning to end. Otherwise it creates an unintentionally comic situation where visitors wave their hands theatrically under taps and flush sensors… before poking a sticky plastic soap button that has survived since 2007.
Of course, there is also the practical reality that some touchless systems are temperamental. We have all experienced taps that refuse to recognise hands, dryers that activate for no apparent reason, or toilet sensors determined to flush while you are still sitting there.
But when touchless systems work properly, they genuinely improve convenience and hygiene.
Which is why the untouched elephant in the room remains the soap dispenser.
If businesses are going to embrace sensor-operated toilets and taps, perhaps it is finally time to complete the job properly and remove the one thing everybody still has to touch before getting clean in the first place.
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