A DC restaurant has put new age restrictions on their restaurant that’s stirred up some local controversy. Think about this scenario and ask yourself what you would do. You run a popular restaurant and hookah bar in Capitol Hill in a residential area. You’ve been noticing there tends to be a lot of noise after hours from your patrons, whether it’s their car engines revving or music coming from their phones. So, what would you do? In the case of Cafe 8’s owners, they thought of a simple solution: ban anyone under 30 from entering after 8:30 pm.
Cafe 8 posted to Instagram announcing the changes, but the post has since been deleted. Washington Post had remarked on the post while it was still up, writing that part of it read, “Due to recent unforeseen incidents we have updated our entrance policy to ensure a safe and enjoyable environment for all our patrons.” We aren’t sure of why or when the post was taken down.
This isn’t the first time a restaurant has been in the news for raising the age limit for entry. In fact, in recent years, there seems to be a trend of some restaurants doing just that in order to facilitate an older crowd.
Bliss, an upscale Caribbean restaurant in St. Louis, adopted a similar policy of not letting in anyone under 25 during the weekends. The new ordinance caused some social media backlash, with news reports coming out and people giving their take on social media. While no restaurant will out-right come out and advise others take part in this tactic, the success has influenced restaurants to take on the same policy, such as Ohio’s Donerick’s Pub and now, Cafe 8.
Some legal experts have chimed in to say that putting age restrictions could land restaurant owners in hot water. In D.C., the Human Rights Act expands the kinds of traits that businesses can’t discriminate against, including age over 18, personal appearance and political affiliation, meaning that discriminating based on age could actually open Cafe 8 up to liability. There is an exception if the age restrictions are put into place to allow a restaurant to run effectively. Wether or not Cafe 8’s rule falls under this exemption remains to be seen.
What do you think of the new age restrictions and do you think more restaurants should implement it?