Rumor has it that by the third or fourth kid, you give up worrying about perfectly clean hands. You more experienced parents will have to let me know just how true that is. But now that Baby A is two and a half, I can understand. At some point, safety becomes more about making sure the child hasn’t run out into the parking lot and less about keeping those little fingers sanitized.
No kidding. We recently installed a slide-lock way up high inside our front door because Baby A was opting to go on walks outside by herself. Scary, huh?
For those of us with the luxury of focusing our cleanliness efforts on only one child, chain restaurants can still seem like repositories of ick. From sticky tables to dirty high-chairs, eating out with a young child can feel like a three-legged race in which your race partner is an octopus.
That’s why I thought it was great to hear Chick-fil-A launched a program early this year to put complimentary hand-sanitizer wipes and disposable placemats in Chick-fil-A restaurants. This is a smart move, and I hope more restaurant chains will follow suit.
The Chick-fil-A Children’s Placemat is a disposable sanitary eating surface designed to help babies and toddlers eat finger foods safely. It’s ideal for kids who are using tray-less high chairs. (The official announcement specified “kids three and under,” but Baby A and many of her friends gave up high chairs a long time ago, before age two.) The placemat also features educational games that parents can play with children while eating, as well as information on Chick-fil-A’s Kid’s Meal options.
The placemat is supplied by Neat Solutions, Inc., which was founded by a mom trying to clean up her own kids’ dining experiences.
At the same time, Chick-fil-A partnered with GOJO, the inventors of Purell, to offer co-branded sanitizing hand wipes at participating Chick-fil-A locations to encourage customers to clean and sanitize their hands before eating. Chick-fil-A franchisees operating stand-alone restaurants now have the option of installing a special dispenser adjacent to their playground areas that has individual Purell hand wipe packets for parents to help their children to use to clean their hands after playing.
Restaurants also will offer the wipes to on-the-go customers ordering through the drive-thru, as well as hand them out to customers in the dining rooms. The wipes also will be available at the chain’s mall locations, where it is more difficult for customers to wash their hands before eating in food courts that no longer have easy access to restroom facilities.
Amen, amen, and AMEN. Our whole family used a Purell station inside the playground at a Chick-fil-A just last week. (That was after I had to climb twenty-five feet up inside said playground to convice A. it really, truly was time to leave. But that’s for another post.)
Just the other day, Baby A decided to explore the underside of our table in the food court at the mall. “What’s that, Mommy?,” she asked, picking at a wad of dried-up chewing gum. “Is that a treat?”
Nope, honey. But restaurant chains paying attention to what parents want? That’s a big treat.
By Lea on 01/25/07 in Children, Columns, Health, Quick Serve Kids
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