Sunscreen on the menu of 150 Dutch restaurants, cafés

Around 150 restaurants and cafés in the Netherlands now not only serve food and drinks but also sunscreen. They added “shots” of sunscreen to their menus at the initiative of health insurer Zilveren Kruis, which wants to encourage people to wear sunscreen when sitting on the terrace.

Hospitality entrepreneur Peter Forger noticed that visitors often don’t apply sunscreen when sitting on the terrace of his cafe in the center of Den Bosch. “That is very worrying,” he told Omroep Brabant, explaining why he added the SPF 30 sunscreen to his menu.

The small tubes of sunscreen are placed on the terrace tables. “That lowers the threshold for applying the sunscreen,” Forger said. And they’re getting used. ”We see that the tubes are empty, so that is a good sign.”

Zilveren Kruis developed the sunscreen tubes specifically for the catering industry and has been offering them cheaply to cafés and restaurants for a few weeks now. They may not be sold at a profit but can be given away for free.

Dermatologist Mitra Tebbe-Gholami stressed the importance of wearing sunscreen. “Because the more often someone gets sunburned, the greater the chance of skin cancer,” she said to the broadcaster. About 28 percent of sunburns in the Netherlands occur on the terrace or in the garden, research showed.