Handling Children in Pubs

Bans, Curfews, and Compromises: How to Manage Family-friendly Bars

New parents these days – many of them millennials1 who are balancing families and careers – are more willing to fit their kids into their lifestyles,2 instead of giving up their interests to raise kids in the seclusion of the suburbs. Sometimes, that means taking their children with them to beer gardens, pubs, and taprooms while they meet up with friends to enjoy a pint or two.

Yet, parents who bring their children to bars can find themselves at odds with non-parents who aren't in the mood to sympathize with crying kids. They may even face scrutiny from fellow parents who've left their own kids at home to enjoy a child-free evening. In these cases, at least one party's experience is usually negatively affected to the point they might rethink ever coming back. Obviously this is a situation customers and business owners alike want to avoid, but it can be incredibly difficult to please every person who visits an establishment, especially if they expect such different experiences.

Kid-free Policies in Restaurants & Bars

Whether the owner and patrons of a business feel there's an issue with children in bars depends on a number of factors, including the establishment's location, desired clientele, and operating hours. For example, a large pub that caters to families in the neighborhood sets different expectations for its customers than a small craft beer bar. When handling the potential controversy of children in bars, operators like those of the bars discussed below are often tasked with balancing the desires of their patrons with the needs of their businesses and may have to deal with at least a little fallout from their decisions.

The Hopleaf Bar in Chicago has a strict 21 and up policy,3 which is displayed on its website's front page: "Hopleaf is an adult venue - everyone must be 21 or over with valid ID to enter. Sorry: children (including infants) will not be admitted." This policy has led to more than a few disgruntled customers, some of whom have taken to Yelp to voice their complaints; others have penned entire articles dedicated to why they don't like the policy.

Author and former Hopleaf fan Justin Shady opined in Chicago Mag, "To be fair, there are restrictions I believe a restaurant has a right to enforce. …But no kids? Like, no one under 21 at all, ever? For a restaurant that serves food? Why?"4

Some operators trying to accommodate diners with kids and those without may not be willing to commit to a total ban on anyone under the age of 21. Another option is to set a kid curfew that allows all ages into the business until a certain time. That time tends to vary from one business to another, since a bar that caters to employees in the area may want to be adults-only after 5 p.m. but a neighborhood beer garden may let kids and their parents hang out until later in the evening.

In 2012, the tension between parents and child-free customers in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood was described as a "turf war."5 That year, Greenwood Park, a newly opened 13,000-square-foot bar with indoor and outdoor space, found itself in the middle of the controversy. Advertised as a family-friendly restaurant, bar, and beer garden, the business was inundated with Yelp reviews bemoaning the number of apparently unsupervised children on the premises. When a 4 p.m. kid curfew was put into place, those reviews were replaced by negative reviews from displeased parents who were no longer able to enjoy the space. According to the Greenwood Park website, the business's policy has now settled somewhere in the middle: Though still self-described as family friendly, all patrons must be 21 and up after 7 p.m.6

References

  1. New Research: The Millennial Generation Becomes Parents. Millennial Marketing. Accessed October 2021.
  2. How Chicago Parents are Incorporating Kids into Their City-centric Lives. Chicago Tribune. Accessed October 2021.
  3. Hopleaf Bar. Hopleaf Bar. Accessed October 2021.
  4. Sure, Hopleaf Is Great, but Won't Somebody Please Think of the Children?. Chicago Magazine. Accessed October 2021.
  5. As Beer Garden Welcomes the Juice-Box Set, Some Barflies Jeer. New York Times. Accessed October 2021.
  6. About Greenwood Park. Greenwood Park. Accessed October 2021.