I find it surprising that there are cafés without restrooms. In many countries if you have at least one table you are required to have a restroom to be given a license to operate your business.
American cities are poorly legislated and suffer from a tragedy of the commons when it comes to basic public needs like restrooms. We have deep seated issues that keep us from being able to have nice things like that.
A lot of European countries I've been to suffer an even worse result - restaurants are legally allowed to _charge_ already paying customers to use a restroom. Coming from Canada, I can never imagine treating your patrons like that.
What country? I've never experienced this in any European country I've been to.
Edit: no, once. The McDonald's in the Netherlands on the A16 highway, right after the Belgian border has paid toilets, even for customers. It's a disgrace.
I mentioned below, but in my case it was Netherlands and Germany. I'm seeing now it's not a very widespread practice, I just got unlucky last time I visited.
Little Germany or Netherlands experience here. But in Austria, Italy and Switzerland I never encountered a toilet in a bar/restaurant you had to pay for.
Which countries ? I’ve never been to a place where as an already paying customer I had to pay for the restroom. You often do see signs ‘customers only’ on the restroom though.
If I recall, it was fast food type joints in Netherlands and Germany. What blew my mind was that these places would employ someone to actually stand guard at the washrooms and collect payment. Wild behavior, in my opinion.
I can't recall the last time I've been to a cafe in the US without a bathroom. Perhaps we don't legislate this stuff because we don't have the problem?
where I am, they're only required if you have over a certain number of seats. The mostly pickup/delivery pizza place near me has 2 tables in a comically large empty foyer because I think that was their workaround.
My favorite regional 'fast food joint' is "Cookout" (NC/Tenn). Not only is the Big Double Tray a fantastic & delicious value... they have a hand-washing sink immediately next to the ordering line (so you can wash your hands while waiting).
One could call it an unfunded mandate for public availability of restrooms. Not that I find that to be a bad thing.
I noticed in Denver a number of places that had gone out of their way to remove seating specifically to avoid having to offer restrooms to the booming homeless population in the urban center there.
