You have your two small kids with you while you’re shopping in a general retail store. Suddenly, your youngest starts doing the potty dance. You hurry to the store restroom before there’s an accident. Even though the store is clean and orderly, you find the restroom’s another story. The floor is dirty and covered in paper towels. The stalls are gross, the stall door won’t lock, there’s little to no toilet paper, and the soap dispenser is broken. Even if you normally like that store, how likely is it that you’ll return to this store after that experience? Imagine this same scenario in a restaurant, and you have a recipe for a grand, “brand disaster” on your hands.

There are a lot of things that affect the customer experience in a store — and you might not think that restroom cleanliness would make all that big of a difference. For some people, though, a dirty public restroom actually creates feelings of anxiety, fear and disgust — feelings they’ll remember, feelings you don’t want to have associated with your brand. In these situations, your restroom can take over your brand. Parents comprise a significant portion of shoppers in general retail stores. While some people may put up with a dirty restrooms for themselves, parents are likely to never return to a store that’s too dirty for their kids.