Water company fights tap stigma

Local restaurants may start allowing customers to deviate from sparkling or still if a water management company's newest campaign proves successful.

Veolia Voda Czech Republic has launched a campaign to promote tap water as a healthy and economic alternative to bottled waters, which have grown in popularity since their arrival on the local market two decades ago. To add cache to the more inelegant water choice, Veolia has even commissioned custom glass carafes by Czech designer Daniel Piršč for participating restaurants to offer tap water for free or at a nominal fee starting this summer. Veolia's market research found up to 86 percent of Czechs would order tap water in a restaurant and be willing to pay a small price for it, but 77.6 percent of Czechs polled could not name a restaurant that offers tap water, said Marcela Dvořáková, a spokeswoman for Veolia.

"Our survey showed that most people drink tap water at home and consider it normal, while in restaurants, they drink bottled water," she said. "We want to bring tap water back into restaurants and cafés."

Prague's drinking water comes from two quality-monitored water treatment plants. Tap water across the entire country is as drinkable as bottled water and is "safe and normal," said Jakub Kašpar, a spokesman for the Environment Ministry.

"We recommend that people drink tap water normally and choose it [over bottled water], because they will save money as well as huge amounts of energy and waste needed to produce bottles," he said.

Despite such endorsements, Veolia faces the difficult task of reversing the negative stigma tap water has for Czechs. Marketing campaigns for bottled water and mineral water promoting the quality and supposed health benefits of such products have deeply swayed public opinion, said Václava Kunová, a spokeswoman for Nutradit, a nutritional consultation center that has worked actively over the past few years to promote tap water.

"The bottled water trend started 18 years ago and has been fed by massive advertising, so many consumers believe in the magical power of minerals," she said. "Actually, some Czech mineral waters contain high levels of sodium, which is dangerous for people suffering from hypertension."

Kunová explained that inexpensive restaurants, which entice customers by offering cheap lunch menus and daily specials, are less likely to serve tap water because they count on bottled water sales to make up their profit margin. Gourmet restaurants, which rely less on daily sales for business, hardly worry about losing a few crowns on a glass of water, she said. Tomáš Melich, managing director of Bellevue restaurant, said the restaurant's customers are always provided tap water free of charge if they request it.

"It is especially common for Americans to ask for tap water, because Czech people don't trust the tap water," he said. "For Czechs, 'Mattoni' is the general word for water."

Melich said that Bellevue serves an international variety of bottled waters but said a "big campaign" such as Veolia's would probably be successful in popularizing tap water among Czech customers.

One of the biggest motives for Veolia's campaign is to bring attention to the tap water concept, making it a more common choice for both customers and restaurants. The campaign will not be in full swing until the summer, but it already seems to be having an effect. Václav Stárek, spokesman for the Czech Association of Hotels and Restaurants, said tap water has been one of the recently discussed issues within the association.

"We've recently been discussing the situation of a client coming into a restaurant and wanting tap water. We think that he or she should have it, as it's commonly served in the rest of the world," he said. "From the business point of view, there's no reason for a restaurant not to offer tap water."

One liter of tap water costs approximately 0.06 Kč ($0.003). According to Veolia's survey, 45.8 percent of customers would be willing to pay 5 Kč for 2 deciliters of tap water, while 5.6 percent would be willing to pay half the price of the same amount of bottled water. Dvořáková said the Czech Republic is starting to follow in the footsteps of other Western countries where tap water in restaurants is the norm rather than a privilege.

"We found inspiration for this project abroad in campaigns in London, New York and Paris. We are only at the beginning," she said.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com