Last updated April 12, 2019
A restaurant in Los Angeles is offering discounts to customers who can manage to go for their entire meal without reaching for their new or old cell phone. Eva Restaurant is offering a five percent discount for customers who hand over their cell phone to the receptionist for the whole meal.
Mark Gold, who runs the restaurant together with his wife Alejandra, put the brand new policy into effect just over a month ago and estimates that since then around 40 to 50 percent of their customers have opted to ditch their cell phones to get a discount on their meal. “Eva is really about family and being at home,” Gold says. “That’s what we want to exemplify. We just want people to connect again.”
Gold dreamed up the idea after having a conversation noting the annoyance factor of people constantly using their communication devices no matter where they were or what they were doing. Customers to Eva are informed of the restaurant’s cell phone policy via a statement on their menu.
A number of eating spots have been asking their customers to avoid using their cell phones, but Gold thinks Eva Restaurant, which is situated on Los Angeles’ Beverly Boulevard, is the first which actually offers a discount for doing so and says customers often take to the idea. “They actually get really enthusiastic about it,” he notes. “I think people generally like the idea of being able to turn off their cell phones.”