Faqs

Q. Can I drink coffee in a non-kosher hotel?


A. The answer to your question depends on where the coffee will be coming from - your hotel room or the hotel kitchen - as follows:


In many hotel rooms you will find a small coffee maker and a few pouches of ground coffee. If you can determine that all the coffee pouches are kosher [either because they contain pure unflavored coffee (regular or decaffeinated) or are certified kosher], then you can assume the coffee maker has always been used for those varieties and you may use it as kosher.

If one or more varieties of provided are not kosher, then you should refrain from using the coffee maker.

In some upscale hotels, the coffee makers are removed from the rooms and washed in the hotel kitchen. In those cases, we would not recommend using the coffee maker, since there is no way to know if it was washed together with non-kosher dishes.

On the other hand, we are not able to recommend you taking a cup of coffee or hot water from the hotel kitchen or restaurant. In most cases, coffee served in a non-kosher hotel from an urn, metal coffee pot, pump bottle, or other container cannot be assumed to be kosher, because the containers may have been previously used with non-kosher hot drinks and/or washed together with non-kosher dishes. For example, coffee urns are sometimes used in hotel kitchens as "ladles" to move soup from large kettles into individual bowls. There are limited situations in which one can determine that neither of these concerns applies, and in those cases it is to drink the coffee; otherwise we cannot recommend it.