Asked not to eat food from elsewhere

[moogoom]

In an independent burger bar tucked away in the corner. It is 7:30 and just finished some shopping with kids in tow. DD has decided burgers are another thing she cant eat anymore so we quickly called next door for a kids sandwich and popped back to previous tucked away seat. The owner comes along and tells me to ask my daughter to put the sandwich away if we are eating in. But loudly so the customers can hear, which they all did. So would you call this pernickety behaviour or her prerogative?

It's a H&S / food hygiene issue, if I remember from working in restaurants years ago.

you could take something in with nuts, for example, into a nut-free zone
you could be poorly with your own food & blame the restaurant (people do this)
you could take meat into a veggie restaurant etc

In mc donalds someone bought in a kfc from next door and was asked to leave so its not just cafes and restaurants that do it. You would not go in to a costa coffee with a Starbucks cup of coffee would you?

DD has decided burgers are another thing she cant eat anymore

This has probably already be said but I think this is your biggest problem.

YABU

YABU you are taking up space in their place that could be used for other customers, you will make more work as they will need to clean where you sat and you may use their facilities. Why should they pay for you?

You were rude not to ask first and yes he may have snapped at you but have you considered you may have been the 15th person to do it that day ?
You need to put your foot down with your daughter too by the sound of it

They were within their rights to tell you not to eat food not purchased there, if maybe a bit arsey as you’d bought other food.

However YWBVU to pander to your child in this way. Mine would be told to eat off the menu or go hungry. She acts like this because you let her away with it.

pernickety behaviour

Hmmm, let me think now, I'm running a cafe, someone wants to use a table and feed their child a sandwich they have brought in, rather than order something from my menu. I'm obviously going t9 need quite some time to think this one through....err, no, absolutely their prerogative.

I've always been a picky eater and as a child was told "Pick something off the menu or starve, your choice."

Guess how often I picked the latter option?

And yes YABU and she was within her right to tell you so, it doesn't matter what kind of restaurant it was.

I can’t believe you would even consider doing this. CFuckery at its finest

am I the only one who having just read this thread, really wants to eat a burger right now?! misses point of thread

YWBU to not ask, burger bar WU to make a production of it. I've done the same on occasion, but I asked first. I think, for a child, the restaurant would be U to refuse actually, they're still getting food sold after all.

I object to picky eaters being spoilt and brats as a default, hate this kind of inflammatory language about children.

The daughter isn't taking a place someone else could have had as they were sat at a table as a family, eating, so unlikely someone else would have sat there. And whoever mentioned gas/electricity/lighting - this isn't going to change because of one person. Yeah she could've eaten the sandwich before/after your meal but I don't she should be made to eat it outside on her own. In future I'd probably ask OP but I don't think it's that big a deal, I'm surprised so many do

And the burger bar wasn't missing out on a sale, the daughter didn't want anything from there so would have had nothing. I couldn't leave a child without food when we were all eating

Logically, even if you went and got a sandwich afterwards as many have suggested, your daughter was going to sit with you, taking up space and not eating anything from the menu either way, so eating a sandwich would have made no real difference, unless she is an incredibly messy eater and would have created a huge amount of work for someone to clean up after her.

However, it's still not something I would do (and I often carry food for my son who is 2 and has coeliac disease, so often can't be persuaded to eat the limited gluten free options in many places, so I'm not unsympathetic to your plight), because it's just not the done thing in the UK.

I remember travelling around the west coast of the US with a load of people and we would sit in the place the majority wanted to eat while individuals would go off and get food from elsewhere and bring it in (all fast food, so Taco Bell and Wendy's eaten in a McDonalds etc) and I was scandalised the first time I saw it, but it didn't seem to be a big deal there and nobody else commented on it, so perhaps it is a cultural thing rather than a logical one.

The daughter isn't taking a place someone else could have had as they were sat at a table as a family, eating, so unlikely someone else would have sat there.

Actually she was. If they had bought and taken away, then that would leave a table free for proper paying customers who would all eat from the van. As it was, they presumably had 3 people sitting at a table for 4 with only 2 actually eating in the busy evening dinner service time. That is a waste of two possible dinner sales.

So youd really make your kid stand outside or tell her to wait until we had eaten our food and leave before eating a small sandwich?

Yes, how does pandering to her whims deter her from being the “little madam” you say she is? Where is exactly the harm in her being inconvenienced by her actions, after all it was a small sandwich, she was hardly ravenous.

The fact that you have to be told that ‘bringing outside food in’ to an eatery is a standard no no, no matter how discreet you thought you were being, says an awful lot.

Experiencing the consequences of her behaviour is a better lesson than being pandered to.

It's up to management, but being rude to customers is just silly, I doubt you will go back, along with the friends you tell, then leave a bad review on line.

How was the manager rude? Notwithstanding OP saying she spoke loudly, O doubt she shouted or was mean or rude

Fucking hell , why leave them a bad review Zommum ?
The OP was out of order , she should have asked first

As there are no issues other than fussiness why bring up possible issues to say the guy was wrong?

Forgive me if I am wrong, but I read it as the owner was a woman?

She didn't know that though did she? The owner just presumed and was IMO quite confrontational, the tone conveyed in the op reads as rather hostile and abrupt to me and OP clearly states that the conversation was loud enough for other customers to hear.

Quite frankly as an independent burger bar which are dime a dozen and most likely rely on repeat customers I would have thought that even when laying down rules you do so with a measured approach and in a way that doesn't put the customer on the wrong foot yet clear enough to be understood and most importantly of all polite and discreet.

OP did buy food from them so its not like the burger bar didn't make any money from them, they could have just as easily waited until the end of the meal, its less confrontational that way, raising the issue whilst they were eating just means that the whole meal is awkward, I doubt any other customers were drastically affected by a 9 year old girl eating a sandwich whilst her family ate food from the bar.

You are right, it is her burger bar so she can do as she wishes, but They've just lost a customer, I am surprised at her lack of business sense, I would rather have a repeat customer who spends XX amount and put up with her child eating a simple sandwich than alienate the whole family, lose them as potential revenue and risk them bad mouthing my business.

Its an independent restaurant, from my experience they have a little more leeway with what they class as acceptable than a chain.

They didn't want to take out though olivia, they wanted to eat in

They didn't want to take out though olivia, they wanted to eat in

Then they all should have eaten from the truck. The dd could have had some chips and salad if she wasn't being pandered to. It isn't the done thing to take food you've bought elsewhere and eat it in another establishment selling food.

@Takfujimoto - the problem with saying that it was OK, because the OP did order some things from the burger place is that it opens the door to people taking the piss - that old saying - give them an inch, and they'll take a yard.

So if it is OK for one customer to buy food for two people, and bring in food for another from a different cafe/restaurant/shop/whatever, then it is harder for the management to say No to the person who buys for one, but brings in food for two, or, at the far end of the scale, who just buys a coffee and produces a whole picnic.

From the point of view of the manager, it is easier to have a hard-and-fast rule, than to get into those sorts of shades of grey.

STDG I can appreciate that pov and I wouldn't become angry if I was suddenly asked by Five guys to leave or make my DD pack her subway up, I would just leave.

But I do think that the owners approach in this instance was not keeping in mind with good customer service, she didn't know why the DD had a sandwich and if it were my restaurant I would have left it until the end of the meal since they had paid for it and politely mention we don't allow food from other restaurants unless its baby food etc, as they paid the bill.

I think that's what I have an issue with, there was no need imo to ruin the meal.