Feeling Like Your Meals Out Aren’t as Social? Frankie & Benny’s May Have a Solution.

Gone are the days where you could sit with someone for hours without being interrupted by the harsh buzzing notification from a phone carefully positioned next to your napkin on the dinner table.  Nowadays, our mobiles are normally closer to us than the people we sit with for a meal.

It seems a little out dated to preach about reducing the use of your mobile phone; but perhaps there is a way to give ourselves some down time.  Whether you’re eating out with family, friends, or you’re on a first date; we can all agree that instead of conversing through text at the table, we should look up and talk to the people around us instead.

Frankie & Benny’s may have a way to help with this.  Following up from a nationwide study that revealed the heart-breaking result that up to 72% of children wish their family would spend more time talking with them and less time looking at their phones; and one in ten felt that their parents favoured looking at their phones rather than talking to them, feeling second best to technology.

This is when The Restaurant Group-owned chain decided to take action and figure out a way to get its customers talking to one another more.  Rather than enforcing a rule, they will start asking customers if they would like to pop their phones into a lockable box before going to their table, making it easier to cut off from the outside world, enjoy the food and enjoy the company around them.

The initiative was launched on the 29^th of November and will run through until the 7^th of December, to trial it out and see if it is a success – and if it is, this new option could be here to stay.

It is undeniable that phones have become more popular, and more of a necessity, over the past few years which makes it clear that they’re a big part of our lives; but perhaps it is time to prioritise the people around us a little more.

Do you agree with this notion? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic!