Reservations skyrocket after North Carolina restaurant bans kids
When the parents of a little girl with an iPad refused to turn the volume down in their upscale Italian restaurant in Mooresville, N.C., Caruso’s had had enough.
Yoshi Nunez, the manager at the restaurant, said, “Finally, we had to ask them to leave. They were upset, but they didn’t seem to care about what the other guests thought. We tried to be nice about the situation, but we’re here to take care of customers and we can’t tell a parent how to control their kids.
“That was the incident that triggered the entire thing.”
The “entire thing” is the restaurant banning children under 5. They began the new policy in January, and the move didn’t go unnoticed.
Some were happy with the new rule, while others had the opposite reaction.
— Restaurant owner allegedly kicked student out of venue for being black —
The ban on children, which was the brainchild of the owner Pasquale Caruso, has led to increased reservations, with the number of people served each day going from 50 to about 80.
“Banning children has always been a topic in the industry and every owner says, ‘I wish I could do it,’” he said. “Our owner has the full support of the staff. We work here to make a living, too, and we support our owner 100 percent.”
This is not a unique concept. Restaurants in Korea, Australia, Texas, Pennsylvania and California have all banned small children or set up measures to control their behavior.
