Wacky Wireless News: LA Restaurant Pays Patrons to Put Down the Phone

Posted on Aug 17th 2012

It's not easy to set aside your phone for an hour and or two, especially if your job requires almost constant connection. If giving up your phone during a nice dinner out with friends or a date could save you money, though, would you do it?

One restaurant in Los Angeles is hoping you'll take the bait. Eva Restaurant is offering its patrons incentive to take a step back from their mobile connections and smell the roses … or the wild halibut, fennel soup and butterscotch pudding in this case.

Eva offers customers a 5 percent discount if they agree to put away their mobile phones before ordering their meals. The restaurant’s owner and head chef Mark Gold claims he’s interested in getting people to connect without the help of a mobile device over a nice meal in a relaxed, homey atmosphere.

Another way to – potentially – save some money while dining is with Phone Stacking, a game based on the no-cell-phones rule. Everyone at the table sets their phones aside at the beginning of dinner and the first person to reach for his or her phone covers the cost of the meal.

If you're one of those who simply can't give up the phone during an evening out, that's okay too. There’s no judgment coming from Gold’s end, as he says he is also a cell phone junkie. "I'm guilty of it as well,” Gold said in a recent interview with AirTalk, a Southern California Public Radio show. “When [my wife and I] go to dinner it seems like the cell phone is part of the table setting now. Every table you look at, it's a wine glass, the silverware and the cell phone," he joked.

Gold says that almost half of his restaurant’s patrons have taken advantage of the deal.