Restaurant Pays Diners To Ditch Phones

Where is your phone when you sit down for dinner? If you're like us, it's on the table, keeping you up-to-speed on both the important and the mundane throughout the meal. It's clearly an accepted practice these days, but not everyone's on board. Some restaurants are taking a stand, and one is going so far as to offer discounts to people who part with their phones for dinner.

And we're not kidding when we say that you'll part with your phone - there's more to this than simply turning it off. EVA Restaurant, a hip spot in Los Angeles, takes 5% off your meal only if you leave your phone with the receptionist. That's right - you can't even have it on vibrate for important calls.

As you might expect, the discount isn't swaying everyone. The new discount has been around for about a month, now, and the restaurant estimates that as many as half of its customers aren't parting with their phones. But then, half of them are, and that says that the days of bringing only yourself to the dinner table may not be over for everyone. It'll be interesting to see whether phone-free discounts catch on with other restaurants.