I've joked around with this idea before, except I called it Püber.
In all seriousness, this is an issue I deal with frequently in NYC. I'm out and about in Manhattan all day, get struck by the need to pee, and then run around trying to find any place with a restroom. Paying a buck or two would be a negligible cost if it meant immediate relief.
If they expanded and got enough supply, I'd definitely use their service.
I have a fairly small bladder and I like beer, coffee and soda, so I've had to develop a bit of expertise in this area.
My standby move is to find a decently busy restaurant that's upscale enough to not have a lock on the bathroom like a big-city Starbucks / McDonalds. They'll almost always have a host / hostess stand at the front where people intercept you and prevent you from using their restroom unless you're a customer.
So I've started just walking straight past the stand while 'scanning' the restaurant. If they slow you down (they probably will) to ask if they can help you, just tell them that you're meeting some people and are going to check if they've already been seated.
Walk straight to the bathroom, do your business, and right back out the front. "I didn't see them, I'm going to wait outside." It's never failed me. Use responsibly.
Or be like plenty of places in Europe, chuck 50c in the basket outside the toilet. More if it's a number 2. Or if it was really clean.
One of the worst moments I had was in a rural part of Belgium, I had a call of nature whilst in the cafe, after completion I realised I had no euros left. Walk of shame to my table, the waiter notices nothing went in the basket and says something about Englanders just loud enough for me to hear.
I went to visit NYC in 2012 and was so surprised by the lack of clean toilets around... I would've paid $5 for a good, CLEAN toilet. Usually I just go to Starbucks (works well in Europe), but I found them pretty horrible in NYC..
I go to New York City all the time (but I don't live there) and I've never had an issue with finding a clean bathroom, ever. Boston is a different story though I've only been there a handful of times.
Walk into Starbucks or McDonalds, always worked for me. Never had a cleanness problem. I usually only pee when I am in an establishment as a customer though.
Try having the same issue on your first time in NYC, with the added difficulty of being in a wheelchair! I did, and I'd even pay a monthly fee for something like this if I could get at a list of confirmed wheelchair-accessible bathrooms.
You're better off going to a hotel in terms of cleanliness, and they are located all over midtown. I've never been refused from a hotel when I searched for or asked where the restroom was
Charging to use the restroom urgently gets close to violating the rules of civil society in my books. Yes, I know city governments do it in many big cities. Yes, I know it is the norm in many parts of Europe. But still ...
I've had a few businesses (even chains) in NYC insist that I purchase something before using their restroom. As someone who has a comfortable living, I don't hesitate. At the same time, I make a mental note to not give that store my business if I can help it. The whole kindness to strangers thing .. yeah .. that's mostly dead.
I understand the problems caused by homeless individuals when using restrooms or camping out in stores. I even get that the rest room maintenance costs money. In Europe, when you have to pay those old ladies to use the restroom to pee ... that's their income. But still ... when you turn away someone when they urgently need to go ... that's just wrong.
According to http://www.lawblog.de/index.php/archives/2014/01/23/wem-geho... those old ladies in Europe do not get this money as income!
The article says that one of them earned up to 8000 EUR/day in shopping mall during chrismas. She never cleaned a toilet, she calls other guys in via radio to do it. She had to give all the money to the company which operated the restroom and her job was just to watch the plate on which the money was dropped by customers. The article is about her suing her company about that money
Charging for restrooms is also a bit stupid in some cases. I've run into quite a few restrooms here in Denmark where you need to pay by inserting a coin, typically only 2DKK. That's all well an good, the money goes to keep the restrooms clean and you avoid a lot of misuse. The stupid part is that a rather large number of people don't carry cash anymore.
The local bus and train terminals are 2DKK to use the restrooms, but you do really use cash to pay for your travels anymore, so the assumption that you would have a 2DKK coin is a bit flawed. Why can't I use the same card I use to check-in to bus/train to check-in to the restrooms?
It's even worse than that if you consider that bus or train stations tend to be the places where a lot of tourists transit. If I spend just a few hours in a country it does not make much sense to obtain local cash, especially coins which will be unusable as soon as I leave the country. On the other hand, the chances that I will need a restroom at least once in a few hours are quite high ...
Yeah, this drives me crazy. At King's Cross in London (which I'm at at least once a week) it's 30p - if I have cash it's most likely notes not change, so even though they have machines to give change I don't really want to spend the rest of the day with £9.70 or £19.70 in cash.
Would be even worse abroad (though can't think of a time I've run into it), as apart from places where cards aren't enough (of the places I go to frequently, just Dublin and Amsterdam really), I don't take any cash, even notes.
Most of the times I need it I have maybe 10 minutes before my train leaves London, it's evening or late at night, so my options are to find the change or hold it until a train comes (and hope that it actually has toilets on... which not all trains on my route do). Going to St. Pancras would be fine but would mean getting the next train up to an hour later.
Here across the Sound in Malmö they installed toilet doors that you unlock via premium SMS. Of course, all too late they realized that locks out any tourists without a local phone number...
All jokes aside, I know I would definitely use this service.
I have bathroom issues all the time.
Just recently I was in central london on a busy saturday night and finding a toilet was seriously hard work. Macdonalds had long queues for toilets, so did many other retail outlets and many tube stations dont have toilets. I know residential areas are a little further out from the city, but i'm sure people could get creative and make it work.
I'd even check the toilet "spots" before I went to a crowded area so I know i could pop in when needed.
On the flip-side, acting as a host however, I dont think I could do it. With the state of toilets in most service stations, I couldn't give up my toilet to someone to come in and pee all over the seat or forget to flush or something.
The irony is that, that's going to be the real sticking point.
Presumably, when making consistent money from a toilet, more resources can be allocated to keeping it clean and presentable. Possibly cleaned every few minutes. That would ba a horrible job.
I'd just lock the front door when they come in to use the restroom, inspect the toilet after they are done, and unlock it only after it's clean. Simple as that.
I imagine it could be coded to allow you to open a complaint case against the customer, and the site would force them to choose between paying a fine to you or having their account stopped.
This is why I am just utterly confused about what people are willing to do to "solve a problem" or "jump on a trend".
From a planning perspective, do users have to set this up with some time in advance. If I were to rent out my toilet, I wouldn't really want to be sitting around like a bathroom attendant waiting for strangers to enlist my accommodations. If this were during a big event in my area, I'd rather a) be at the event, b) be as far away from the event as possible. Not stuck inside managing my commode.
If I were on the other end of the transaction, I wouldn't know when nature would be calling. Making it hard to figure out in advance where I need to "rent" a toilet.
After that, how truly rewarding is a couple bucks a pop to allow strangers into your house to relieve themselves? The barrier to entry is not that high and the risk/inconvenience is not trivial. Does it really pad your income that much? To me it just wouldn't be worth the hassle and it's not like they're going to clean up if they make a mess.
Maybe I am just an "old fogey" but some ideas just aren't that good.
> If I were on the other end of the transaction, I wouldn't know when nature would be calling. Making it hard to figure out in advance where I need to "rent" a toilet.
I think the idea is that the app allows you to find a toilet immediately in your immediate area -- not that you reserve, for example, a toilet for 5 minutes at 10:30 PM on Sunday three weeks in advance.
It's from a recent season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the whole season is about a Seinfeld reunion episode - "to make up for the terrible original finale"
Although this clip isn't from Seinfeld, the topic certainly did arise there. In addition to the episode cglace (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7341503) mentions, which I don't remember, there was an episode where George showed Jerry that, given any address, he could name the nearest public bathroom.
The name, while humorous, seems rather likely to provoke Airbnb. The risk of confusing the two is simply too great.
Other than that, I wonder how this works for private customers; seems the number of ... transactions per unit of time can be a lot higher than for somewhere to sleep.
(It's especially amusing when you take into account the stories (whether exaggerated/apocryphal or not) of people using AirBNB as a means to identify places to hold such "parties").
This is good news for trans and gender-ambiguous people if you could make sure it marks (and can be searched for) the availability of gender neutral facilities where they won't get hassle.
I'll assuming that this isn't a joke story. I'm imagining, with some amusement, the inevitable first clash with a city over such a service. You just know someone will complain that this clashes with obscure or arcane zoning laws.
I really don't see this being used in rural areas with septic systems. It seems like this problem only really exists in cities where everyone is on the sewer line. That being said, people get pissed when neighbors airbnb their apartments because of strangers in the building. Multiply that by 20 with randoms using the can and I think you could have some really pissed off neighbors.
Rural areas often host large music festivals and state fairs, which tend to have crummy porta-johns. The rural town where I grew up was packed every summer with campers, antique collectors, and bike riders, and I'm sure some of them would pay to use a nice toilet for a change. And septic systems aren't limited to just rural areas. Many suburbs and towns have them too.
Interestingly (or at least I find it so) any Public House (i.e. Pub) in the UK is required by license and law to let any member of the public use their bathroom, and also to provide fresh water, for no fee.
The toilets do not have to be located in the main building, but be within the property of the main building.
This applies to neither private clubs nor private businesses (i.e. shops).
Hah, clever idea. My strategy, which works well in fairly urban areas in decently sized cities(so imperfect I know), is to just use the bathroom in Hotel Lobbies. Always clean and always available and usually no problem accessing them.
As someone with a family member suffering from moderate Crohn's disease and frequently needs to utilize public restrooms this has obvious appeal. While I cringe at the thought of them paying every time a bathroom is needed out in public, the safety net would be great. It also would allow people who are very sick with Crohn's to venture out of their comfort area.
One thing to consider, in the US many states have instituted "Ally's Law" where businesses are legally required to allow people who need immediate restroom access, assuming it doesn't put the business or person in harm's way.
Is it almost too gimmicky to be taking seriously? I guess a business could host their toilet on the site for free to divert passing traffic into their store?
Many moons ago in France I remember there being these public restrooms in parks that cost like $.25 to use, but then washed themselves before you got in/after. Could that be the next phone booth style trend?
I would happily pay $.50-1 to know its a clean bathroom that is disinfected. On a busy new york street with tons of foot traffic at $.50 the machine could easily generate $5-10k/day gross.
>>>On a busy new york street with tons of foot traffic at $.50 the machine could easily generate $5-10k/day gros
I think you're an order of magnitude too high on that estimate. If a bathroom was used for 45 seconds, cleaned for 15, and then immediately back in use every minute of the day (which is probably a crazy estimate), it would generate $30 an hour, or $720 a day.
As a runner, I'm always looking out for portables and taking mental notes because you never know when you're going to need one. I joked with some friends a few years ago that this would make a good app/website for runners and cyclists. One idea was you could tag the location to indicate whether or not it had paper and/or soap for washing hands.
It's really exciting to see all this feedback on this idea. I've been holding off on sharing http://www.clnli.com until it was more mature. But now seems as good a time as any.
We're going with a totally different business model. It's really good to see another player on the block.
Wow, I was talking about something like this to coworkers a few months back at lunch and thought of the name Hallpass. The challenge we came up with was how to convince store owners there was enough of a revenue stream here to be worth their trouble. Are they paid a flat fee or on a per usage basis?
The best approach seems to be a hybrid approach. Flat fee + per use on top. With something like this, you don't want stores to feel like they're getting the short end of the stick if they are suddenly facing a torrent of bathroom users.
This is not a cool idea, and I would be interested in seeing what a $10/use restroom looks like. Pay toilets are illegal here in Chicago, (allegedly because a mayor once ran out of change at the airport), so I'm sure there'd have to be a fight to implement here.
There are definitely laws that deal with this issue. In California for instance, "restaurants" of a certain footage must make their bathrooms available to customers. Most likely free of charge. http://www.ada-pros.com/know-before-you-go-restroom-requirem...
I think from Starbucks's perspective (and any other store's perspective), they hate having to expend resources on people who don't actually buy anything from them. There were rumors several years ago that Starbucks wanted to close off bathrooms to the public because they were becoming the de facto public bathroom in NY.
This would be a very short-sighted thinking. ROI of making your toilets public feels like it would be much bigger than of any money spent on advertising. Here you have potential customers actually present in your store.
Also, for example I remember exactly where every McDonald's and KFC in my town's centre is only because I sometimes need them as an emergency toilet and/or free Wi-Fi provider. Guess what places come to my mind first when I'm hungry and in the area?
I've been using a Bathroom Finder app on my in-car tablet. It only maps public restrooms but it's very helpful and has reviews. It seems like there would be a lot more public restrooms than private ones available for "rent".
Knowing the floor an exact exit from the lift-block of an Executive Lounge can also be quite useful. The bathroom of an Executive Lounge is often a self contained toilet / shower unit together with power-shower, towels and soaps. Depending on the arrangement (and visibility) of the lounge's front desk and lift block, and occupancy of the lounge (passing traffic needing to need to facilitate the facilities), a quick shower is quickly accomplished.
Where I live (Zurich, Switzerland) it's not uncommon for shops/restaurants to open up their toilets to non-guests during busy events downtown, for a small charge. Most people don't mind paying a few bucks to use a clean toilet instead of the mobile ones provided by the city for free, which usually start smelling really bad only after a couple of hours.
I doubt I would use an app just for that though...
I would have thought that being a two sided market, any available public information would have been already entered, rather than relying on others to submit toilets.
For example, entering all 33,000 McDonalds locations would have been a great start. I'm pretty sure that is a true global source of toilet location data.
Great timing with Mardi Gras-- the company made local news, and if you look at the world map, there's about a dozen openings in New Orleans (but a surprising few in the French Quarter).
I'm convincing the inlaws to to a PPP model in their gallery today.
As a frequent traveler by road in India, at transit towns I rent hotel rooms just to use a clean restroom and to get a decent shower. With such a service I believe this is solving a practical problem and cost effective in my case.
Hi there. I'm a cofounder at Airpnp. If you're really interested I'd like to talk to you about getting your bathroom going for Queen's Day. Email me at max@airpnp.co
That approach might work pretty well on Queen's Day in Amsterdam, too. (Well it's going to be known as King's Day from now on, now that the queen has abdicated.)
In all seriousness, this is an issue I deal with frequently in NYC. I'm out and about in Manhattan all day, get struck by the need to pee, and then run around trying to find any place with a restroom. Paying a buck or two would be a negligible cost if it meant immediate relief.
If they expanded and got enough supply, I'd definitely use their service.