Restaurant offers 5% discount for dining without your cell phone
Know the trick to remembering what’s yours and what’s not on the table at a fancy restaurant?
B.M.W. From left-to-right, there’s your bread plate on the left (B), your meal plate in front (M) and your water glass on the right (W).
It’s a simple exercise, but covers everything, hopefully to prevent you from drinking out of the wrong glass or putting your roll on the wrong plate.
What B.M.W. does not cover, though, is the (C), which stands for cell phone. Today, cell phones have become such common dressing on restaurant tables one eatery is offering a discount if you can simply refrain from checking your mobile during the course of the meal.
You do it, and I do it: we all check our phones during meals in public, often having no regard for manners and plopping the thing right there on the table while we’re served.
*Bing: What you need to know about cell phone etiquette
According to Southern California Public Radio, however, one L.A. restaurant wants to buck the trend, rewarding diners who can cell phone use during meals.
Eva Restaurant in the City of Angels, less than ten minutes from Beverly Hills, has just started a promo that would award patrons a five per cent discount if they check their cell phones at the door.
“For us, it’s really not about people disrupting other guests. Eva is home, and we want to create that environment of home, and we want people to connect again,” the restaurant’s owner/chef said.
“It’s about two people sitting together and just connecting, without the distraction of a phone, and we’re trying to create an ambience where you come in and really enjoy the experience and the food and the company.”
Eva is just a 40 person diner, so it’s likely easier to pull off checking cell phones in such a confined space than, say, doing the same at a Jack Astor’s or other chain restaurant.
To its credit, Eva’s owner says nearly half its patrons take advantage of the five per cent discount.
Would you ditch your cell phone at a restaurant for a discount on the cheque, however modest the savings may be?
By Jason Buckland, MSN Money
Posted by: Richard Zebiere | Aug 21, 2012 7:07:30 AM
Excellent idea.
Posted by: Candace Stark | Aug 21, 2012 3:20:28 PM
What about those of us who don't have a cell phone to begin with....would we get the discount?
Posted by: GM | Aug 21, 2012 4:29:42 PM
You should have someone check your spelling
Dinning should be dining
Posted by: KMN | Aug 21, 2012 6:37:33 PM
dinning? seriously? Grade 3 or 4 spelling I believe.
Posted by: Hugh Jass | Aug 21, 2012 6:40:55 PM
Thank God that somebody is showing some common sense!
It's certainly not the 4 morons I sat a table away from the other day in Vancouver - 4 people, 4 different, very noisy, cell phone conversations at the same time! I wanted to bend all of them over and stuff their phones up their ass!
Posted by: Kanuck | Aug 21, 2012 6:51:25 PM
What in the world did people do before cell phones? Personally I despise them, I have had so many run ins with rude ignorant people in lines at grocery stores, banks, most of them don't have brains to do one thing at a time but when they try and talk on these idiot boxes and deal with a cashier or bank teller and people are standing in line waiting to be served, I go ballistic. Stores should not allow cell phones in places of business. If I had my way, I would put a bounty on them and make it a crime to use in public. You want to use it, go someplace where you are not aggraving other people.
Posted by: NJ | Aug 21, 2012 10:33:12 PM
@KMN ... I think that the author of the article makes a good point. However, your contribution against poor spelling only highlights your poor punctuation ... perhaps less than grade three or four?
Posted by: Tom | Aug 22, 2012 10:31:44 AM
Just inject yourself into the conversation or rudely ask them to quit talking. They are being very rude so join the conversation with some remarks and they will leave or hang up guaranteed. And I hope my spelling is ok. It is so important to the topic of conversation!!!