A small restaurant in Rothau bans the use of smartphones to recapture the atmosphere of days gone by - the initiative is a success.
The news
At a time when everyone yearns to collect the most followers or get as many mentions between stories, posts and reels, the decision by Oliver and Sandra, owners of Les Petits Plats de Mamama restaurant in Rothau, goes decidedly against the grain. In fact, the couple decided last September to ban the use of smartphones in their restaurant. A year on, the two say they are very pleased with the choice, which, from the start, has met with favor among diners.
“We offer a homey and welcoming atmosphere. The choice to ban smartphones was not a foregone conclusion, but we are in a place full of history and small hands creating amazing recipes,” Oliver says. The restaurateur couple has, thus, decided to turn off the smartphones to put its cuisine and its local area in the spotlight, following the path taken since they chose to convert the restaurant from a pizzeria to a restaurant.
"We wanted to enhance Alsace and our grandmothers. Today we offer boiled meats. We cook for our diners; avoiding the distraction of the cell phone means giving them a chance to discover our reality. We want to revive that forgotten atmosphere almost everywhere, even within families. So far it has worked! We see clients chatting from table to table, tables where friendships are born and who, perhaps, then come back to visit us together. We don't want them to come to our house to pull out their cell phones, we want them to fully savor the friendly, family atmosphere," reads a statement in Actu Strasbourg.
Oliver and Sandra are really pleased with their initiative, which, as attested by the Times, has even increased the number of desserts ordered by customers by 30 percent, with 95 percent of people in favor of the digital detox. The two hope to set an example for other fellow restaurateurs to regain the convivial aspect that between social networks and pandemics has, frequently, taken a back seat. The pair, however, is well aware that this scheme is not replicable in all realities of the restaurant industry. “We realize that this system cannot be applied everywhere, but in small places like ours it can be done. We have about 20 seats and this friendly atmosphere is easily created in a small restaurant," Sandra concludes.
