Restaurants are pushing back against phone-filled dining with lockable pouches, screen-free policies and playful challenges—helping guests put down their devices and reconnect over a meal.
4 min
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It wasn’t all that long ago that restaurants and bars around the country were dappled in the glow of cigarettes. Those days are over, but diners haven’t stopped lighting up—now it’s just with the blinding OLED gleam from their phones.
My seven-year run as a bartender started in the BlackBerry era and ended a few years after the birth of the iPhone. Back then, phone interruptions were mostly relegated to a few stray pings. If someone picked up a phone, it was usually only to say “Can I call you back?”
Today, phones are as common in a table-setting as napkins and silverware. If diners themselves aren’t pulling them out to check messages and social media, they’re likely in the background as others record Instagram videos or make FaceTime calls.
Many restaurants and patrons alike are pushing back against the shift that has turned collegial, communal spaces into places to watch TikTok while you eat. Here’s what some are doing—and what we can learn from them.
Antagonist, a cocktail bar in Charlotte, N.C., is pretty antagonistic about phones. Upon entry, each customer receives a lockable Yondr pouch—the same bag some schools use to store students’ phones—that can only be opened by the staff.
“The main goal of our whole concept here really isn’t to burden anybody or take away their property,” Adam Horner, Antagonist’s general manager, said. “It’s essentially just to bring back a little slice of human connection that we all feel has been lost with technology.”
Even if your dinner destination doesn’t have the same rules, you can still borrow the basic idea. Keep your phone somewhere inconvenient or even mildly inaccessible: in your coat pocket, for instance, or your purse.
While Horner admits some patrons have arched an eyebrow at Antagonist’s policy, the benefit of having a place where people can be part of an organic social scene has far outweighed the potential loss of customers, he said. “I strongly encourage people to give it a chance, and sometimes they don’t and they go somewhere else.”
The Edge, a local spot in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood, is a bit less rigid about phones. There’s no ban on them, but the restaurant doesn’t offer internet access. A sign at its bar reads: “No Wi-Fi. No Screens. Connect With Each Other.”
The directive is meant to encourage “stepping away from the digital and being present in the moment,” said Justine Masters, who owns The Edge with her sister Juliet.
Another way anyone with a smartphone can separate themselves from the internet: turn on Airplane mode. It may sound obvious, but it’s a simple and effective way to minimize phone-induced distractions while dining out.
For those wanting to break the grip of a bad habit, one tactic is to replace it with another better-for-you thrill. That’s the strategy behind the fast-food chain Chick-fil-A’s “cellphone coops.”
At a number of locations, diners can request a coop—a cardboard box—where they can put their phones while they eat. The goal is get groups to make it through an entire meal without checking their phones, with free ice cream as a reward. The coops even feature conversation prompts for the table.
You don’t need a cardboard coop to emulate the competition elsewhere—and if ice cream isn’t enough of a draw, treat the person who goes longest without using their phone to a free drink. Or make the loser pay the tip.
The point is to create rituals that result in discipline and, slowly, new habits.
The ubiquity of phones has not only eroded our manners, but also lessened the joys of bar and dining culture. One of Chris Hall’s favorite watering holes is The Saloon in Washington, D.C., a community-orientated beer bar with no televisions and a blanket ban on all phone use.
For him, it’s a bulwark against a bar culture that has become “very insular and not very fun.” He added that, over the years, he’s made at least a dozen friends at The Saloon. “You can talk to strangers in this place.”
Tina Vaughn and Chip Smith, the husband-and-wife owners of Eulalie, an upscale cloth-napkin bistro in Tribeca, also forbid phone use at their restaurant.
The policy is spelled out on a sign in the entryway and on the restaurant’s handwritten menus. Vaughn sees it as a way to help patrons combat the pressure to always be available.
“People want an excuse. They’re dying for someone to say, ‘You can get off that. It’s OK,’ ” she said. “The phone has become less a tool and more of a stress bomb, I feel, for so many.”
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The global economy is increasingly exposed to the risks of an AI slowdown, as data-centre investment fuels growth, trade and technology exports worldwide. While Asian economies benefit from booming chip and hardware demand, a pullback in AI spending could trigger market losses, weaken global trade and increase recession risks.
4 min
A message from the violent swings in stock markets over the past week: The fallout from an artificial-intelligence bust wouldn’t stop at the U.S.’s shores.
The AI build-out has been an engine of growth not just for the U.S. this year but for the whole global economy. Squeezed by the energy crunch caused by the Iran war, the world has relied heavily on U.S. data-center investment to power otherwise lackluster growth.
Global trade has thrived as Asian economies such as China, Taiwan and South Korea have enjoyed booming exports of computer chips, server racks and electronic equipment to feed ravenous demand for computing power in the U.S.
The Silicon Valley bounty is spreading as other economies join the party. Assembly hubs such as Vietnam and Mexico are seeing exports take off. Malaysia, Thailand and Australia are building data centers of their own. Europe’s industrial giants are supplying the power and cooling systems that make the AI revolution possible.
Yet the anxiety that spread through global markets in the aftermath of the U.S. midterm elections shows this growing dependency on Silicon Valley has a downside.
A slowdown in AI investment would punish exports in economies that in many cases show few other signs of growth. A sustained stock slide would crush mom-and-pop investors all over the world who have piled into technology stocks in anticipation of bumper returns. Overstretched budgets mean governments have limited room to respond with more spending.
Economists calculating what might happen if the pace of investment slows or the AI boom turns to full-blown bust say the only real question is how severe the global consequences will be.
“There is very little that can be done to prevent a global recession should the AI boom collapse,” said Frederic Neumann, chief Asia economist at HSBC in Hong Kong.
Stock markets have been on a wild ride since the Democrats’ victory in the U.S. midterm elections sparked concerns that Congress will hit the brakes on data-center development.
The latest upset in the industry has been the alleged spying scandal engulfing Nvidia, the linchpin of the AI ecosystem because of its deep pockets and advanced chips.
Stocks have clawed back some losses in recent days, moves that suggest many investors think the selloff is overdone. Even so, key stocks and indexes remain well below recent peaks. The tech-heavy Nasdaq index closed Wednesday 8% below its year-to-date high. Japan’s Nikkei index is down 16%, and South Korea’s Kospi, home to major memory-chip maker Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, is down 43%.
For now, the stock-market gyrations haven’t spilled over into real economic activity, with global data pointing to the AI boom still going strong.
Asian economies are still seeing bumper export growth, with many of the gains driven by surging prices for chips and other hardware. China’s exports were up 35% year-over-year in October, according to figures from data provider CEIC. South Korea’s were up 93%, with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and others also posting double-digit gains.
Economists at Capital Economics said the export bonanza means global trade is on track for its best spell of annual growth this year since the days of hyperglobalization in the early 1990s, excluding the big rebounds after Covid-19 and the 2008-09 financial crisis.
But the consulting firm warned that as much as 80% of recent export growth has been concentrated in AI-related goods, leaving global trade vulnerable to any change in U.S. spending on data centers. China, South Korea and other major economies are beset by weak consumption, meaning a drop-off in trade would have an outsize hit on growth.
Political and regulatory hurdles could drag on data-center investment. So, too, could rising interest rates or disappointments on earnings if AI firms’ revenues fail to keep up with outlays. The AI splurge already eclipses past infrastructure booms such as the railroads, and even without external pressure it might struggle to maintain that breakneck rate of growth.
As data-center investment slows, “AI capex will turn from a major prop to a drag on world trade,” Marcel Thieliant, head of Asia-Pacific at Capital Economics, said in a report.
Some economists have looked back to the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s as a yardstick to measure the possible costs to the global economy of an AI blowup.
In that episode, U.S. business investment sank and stocks crashed, hurting U.S. consumer spending and crushing imports.
As a share of gross domestic product, U.S. imports of IT-related equipment fell 55% in two years from their mid-2000 peak, according to Oxford Economics—a drop that hit Asian and other economies that were suppliers of the goods. Global trade plummeted, and world growth in 2001 collapsed to just 2%, consistent with a global recession.
The globalized financing of the AI boom would in a bust spread financial pain around the world, adding to the damage from a steep fall in trade. Gaurav Ganguly, head of international economics at Moody’s Analytics in London, said the world would struggle to absorb a sharp AI stock slide on top of an oil shock, tariffs and rising interest rates.
“The result could be a severe economic shock with global recessionary consequences,” he said.
