No one heads to the drive-thru down the street from their home expecting to get scalded by spilling a cup of hot coffee or hot tea on their private parts and seriously maim their breasts, ball-sack, chest, belly, or thighs.
But sadly, it happens every single day, several times a day, in drive-thru places across America, and shockingly it happens much more frequently than what you could possibly wrap your head around. It happens so often, in fact, that it has become one of the restaurant, hospitality, food, and beverage industry’s most newly recognized hazards, risks, and dangerous conditions.
Every year, thousands of customers and employees get scalded and severely burned in America’s restaurants – the industry has experienced more burns and scalds than all other industries combined for decades.
But the reasonably new service system of distributing piping hot coffee through a drive-thru window to someone that will be consuming it in a moving vehicle – combined with today’s potpourri of operational failures, flaws, and shortcomings and an ever-increasing level of management mediocrity has led us to a place where these burn and scald numbers have sky-rocketed over the last ten years or so.
It is easy to see that Americans are on the go more than ever before. It is also easy to see that coffee consumption, at all hours of the day and night, is at an all-time high. Add to this the introduction several years ago of coffee on the go being distributed so heavily via a drive-thru service system – and just like that, we have what might be dubbed a scalding assault on America’s private parts.
The problem is not just from the burns and scalds themselves but is also the vast number of lawsuits and insurance claims because of these burn and scald incidents, accidents and events that happen in America’s drive-thrus from sea to shining sea.
The events speak for themselves. Before this calendar year is out, thousands will be left severely injured, harmed, and maimed due to the impact that hot coffees and hot teas have when they come in direct contact with human skin – especially that most sensitive human skin in the lap region of the body where that coffee most usually spills – one’s private parts.
And I can tell you that once someone has hot coffee hit their own lap while sitting in their vehicle with a seat belt on, they cannot get their clothes off quickly enough to get away from the searing heat of the liquid which has doused their clothes and prevent nasty and painful burns. The severity of the burn injury to the skin in their lap only grows worse with every unbearable second of exposure.
So, what is going on in America’s restaurants? Why are we plagued with such a high volume of severe coffee and tea burns?
Well, the best answer that I can give is this: The restaurant industry – the industry that I dearly love and have spent my entire career working in – is chalk-full of incompetence, mediocrity, untrained employees, apathetic management and safety and risk management neglect.
Simply stated, many of those placed in charge of restaurant premises and responsible for the safety, health, and security of people on the premises lack basic dangerous condition awareness, safety training, and day-to-day operational education to even know how to serve hot coffee and hot tea the correct way and per the industry standards and standards of care.
This is especially true as it pertains to serving hot beverages out of a drive-thru window or to a carry-out customer. This can be said for many of the other various kinds of burns and scalds that take place across the restaurant industry as well, but our topic here is serving hot coffee and tea through a drive-thru and in carry out orders.
To be clear, management being competent and providing industry standard competent person oversight, in many instances, is simply nonexistent. Sadly, the cesspool of mediocrity and below-industry standard level of operational and risk management performance is putting us all at risk.
That’s what is going on in America’s restaurants! And that’s why we are plagued with such a high volume of devastating, crotch-burning drive-thru coffee spills.
-From the Intro to Howard Cannon‘s upcoming book Coffee Burns in Drive-Thrus©
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