Tap Water vs Bottled Water

Wait, I just bought a sandwich. You won’t serve me water?

You might be eating at an upscale steakhouse, a hip bistro, or McDonald’s.  No matter the venue, your frustration is the same.  You kindly order a meal.  The server says, “Would you like something to drink with that?”  You say, “Sure, I’d love a cup of water.”

“Sorry.  We don’t have cups of water.  We have bottled water.”

“Excuse me… what?”

“We don’t have tap water.”  (Translation: we don’t serve tap water because we don’t make money off of it.)

In Boston, this probably happens in 20% of the food places I might stop in, and it strikes me as disrespectful and cold.  Here I am patronizing this establishment, and they can’t spend a few additional pennies and seconds to provide a simple cup of water?  I have even offered to pay 25 or 50 cents for the “inconvenience,” but most of the time the employee won’t budge.

I see this refusal to serve water as unabashed anti-consumer trickery; a spritz of greed in the restaurant industry that we should simply outlaw, reclaim our common decency, and be done with.  But there’s a second problem with the practice: it corners consumers into supporting one of the most egregious rip-offs of the 21st century — the $1 billion industry of bottled water.  Consumer studies in areas with good public water systems consistently show two stunners: 1) blindfolded consumers cannot tell the difference between tap and bottled varieties; and 2) bottled water is neither cleaner nor healthier in any way.  (More on this.)

I’m never one to complain without providing a solution.  So, I did some research for a legal one.  However, I could not find a single law in the United States that bans the practice of refusing to serve tap water to a paying customer.  So I spent a few minutes to draft a simple model bill.  Feel free to edit to taste and file in your own municipal or state legislature.  Hopefully, that next drink will be on the house.

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The Tap Water Availability Act

Definitions

establishment
a restaurant, bar, cafe, or other dining facility licensed by the board of health to serve food, with the exception of mobile food trucks

current customer 
a patron who purchases at least one non-water item on the menu in the current transaction or who has purchased at least one non-water item within the past five minutes

The Act

An establishment must offer tap water to any current customer as an additional menu item, free of charge.  The water must be served in the exact same type of container as that used for soda or a comparable purchased soft drink, including a lid and straw, if applicable.  The water must also be comparable in coldness and with the option of ice, if coldness and ice are available for other purchased soft drinks.  Failure to comply with this law will result in a fine of $300 per infraction.

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