This Jersey Shore Restaurant Will Reward You For Staying Off Your Phone

Toast, with locations in Asbury Park and Red Bank (and North Jersey), has introduced the Cell Phone Challenge.

The rules are simple: sit down with your date or partner or group of friends, turn all your phones to silent, and place them in a container on the table. If you can all go the entire meal without checking your phone, you get 10% off your check!

I think this is fantastic. As a new parent, when we get the chance to go out it's a rare opportunity to relax, so we try not to take our phones out anyway. Getting a discount for that behavior is a nice bonus.

If you're in a group of friends, it's almost a certainty that someone will get distracted by their phone, whether it's a call or a text or some ESPN alert (admittedly the ESPN alert is usually my phone). Keeping all your phones silent and stowed away is a refreshing change-of-pace to keep everyone engaged in conversation.

Even beyond your own table, it'd be great to not have to listen to half of the conversation of the people next to you, or hear their text alerts go off every ten seconds.

Hopefully more restaurants adopt a policy similar to this - if you know of any others, let us know!

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