Restaurant survey results

Guide Dogs’ Restaurant Survey covered five hundred restaurants, bistros and food-serving pubs in nine cities around the UK – Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Belfast, Cardiff and London’s Covent Garden/Strand district.

• When phoned anonymously, restaurant managers were asked if they had any objection to the caller bringing a guide dog onto the premises.
• 12% of restaurant managers refused to allow a guide dog onto their premises.
• Of the remaining 88%, 5% allowed access, but did so reluctantly. Many of these placed conditions on the guide dog owner’s admittance. These conditions included the requirement to dine early, or not at the weekend, or outside, or, at the very least, with prior ‘warning’.
• This reluctance often stemmed from worries about space, noise (to be endured by the dog), health and safety and ignorance of the standards to which guide dogs are trained (concerns about the dog’s behaviour were raised time and again).
• Refusal levels were higher than average in Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff, and lower than average in Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol and Belfast. London’s refusal level was 12% - the national average. The best and worst were Leeds (4%) and Cardiff (24%) respectively.
• 14% of respondents were very welcoming, helpful and seemed, if not knowledgeable, then willing to learn. Bristol and Leeds featured strongly in this category; Glasgow and Belfast, much less so.
• Often, there was no company policy on the issue and it had to be made up on the spot by the manager. Where a policy did exist, restaurant staff were more often than not ignorant of it. In practice, it would be very easy for this ignorance to lead to a refusal of entry, even where company policy would permit entry.
• In principle, the well-known restaurant chains all have guide dog friendly policies, but this is not always apparent in individual outlets. This reinforces the need for good staff training and communication of company policy.
• Only two of the 500 respondents mentioned that refusing guide dog owners entry on account of their dogs was illegal