How young can you be and still eat at a restaurant without an adult?

@cherokeepatti

Right? Like how do you even know if they have money to pay. I wonder what the cut off is. If there's a standard age like how we have a drinking age.

@Pikachu It might be determined by individual managers or corporations.

@cherokeepatti

I think i'm going to have to start calling restaurants and asking them

@Pikachu hey that would be interesting, can you post it?

@cherokeepatti

If i do then i will👍

@cherokeepatti
@Pikachu

I guess I don't understand this.

Where and when I came up we went into restaurants like diners and pizza places, or to food trucks, all the time. As young as however old we were to be off on our own. 10 or so.

I think this depends on where people live. If you're in a city, it's not uncommon for people to be living in a mixed zone area. Maybe even families living on top of stores and restaurants.

I'd go to this Arab candy story with the little girls from my adopted Lebanese family, and the oldest of us was like 10. I'd also go into restaurants on my own at like 10 or 12.

People weren't litigious and there wasn't a fear of pedos. Nobody victimized kids for their money. It wasn't unusual for kids to have their own money. At 1e or 14 I was making $$ mowing lawns and stuff.

@CopperCicada the thing is if a person ever sues a business for something it sets a legal precedent and then the company has to come up with new rules to prevent more lawsuits. If they don't and the same thing happens agin they'll get sued for a whole lot more money.

@cherokeepatti This is why our society is screwed up. We're so scared of everything that we live in bubbles.

@CopperCicada Law schools churned out too many lawyers in the 90's and beyond and more Business management degrees....People with Business management degrees getting jobs in areas that they have never worked before and that creates a scenario for lawyers who need work to look for and make lawsuits.

@cherokeepatti It really doesn't matter. I can take you to places in NYC, upstate NY, Philly, NJ where people live in mixed zoned areas and kids are dropping in to get a coke and a slice after school. Or the local bodega for some tamales or chicken and rice. It's really not a thing.

@CopperCicada Corporations are different than local businesses in the rules they make.

@cherokeepatti Well, the OP was about kids being served at a restaurant.

@CopperCicada

Well i don't mean like going up to a food truck or a mcdonald's. I mean like a proper sit-down restaurant.

@Pikachu I dunno. Where I come from a "proper sit-down" restaurant is a neighborhood Italian place, a pizza counter, a bodega with a food counter, a diner. I guess the only times I remember "kids" being at a fancier place solo would be a date. Prom or some such.

@CopperCicada

Yeah i think high school kids can get away with it

@Pikachu I really think this has much to do with demographics and geography. A small child walking alone into a branded restaurant like Olive Garden in suburbia would probably be really weird. As would a small child walking into a local seafood place here on the coast. Provided they aren't known to anyone on the staff, of course. But in an urban setting, probably not such a big deal. I say that, but I remember a case of a family who got in trouble for letting their kids take the subway alone. So who knows.