In 2017, if a meal consumed at a restaurant doesn’t get posted online, did it really happen?

Now that 95 percent of Americans own a cell phone of some kind, opportunistic restaurateurs are encouraging smartphone usage by designing venues and menus with Instagram in mind. Even if they don’t go viral, these photos become free marketing for a chef’s menu or business. Starbucks rode the Instagram trend hard this past year by releasing limited-edition, eye-popping Unicorn and Zombie-themed Frappuccinos; in San Francisco’s Mission District, the Cuban restaurant Media Noche provides Instagram-ready content in the form of its floral-tiled floors.

A handful of restaurant operators, however, are going in the opposite direction and actively discouraging phone use at the table. The marketing ploy here is meant to appeal to diners that remember “the good ol’ days” when a shared meal was about conviviality and real-life conversation — not “the ‘gram.”

For decades, restaurants have been wrestling with how to best manage customers’ phone usage, long before anyone knew how ingrained smartphones would become in modern society. A 1999 New York Times article reported that in the Big Apple, popular culinary figures like Danny Meyer and Gordon Ramsay struggled with how to handle phone faux pas, with Meyer comparing the awfulness of a cell phone conversation in the dining room to the “clouds of cigarette smoke and pungent fragrances like Giorgio and Poison” that fouled many diners’ experiences during the ’80s.

“It’s just food,” Chang said in a 2008 interview about his ban on phone usage at Momofuku Ko. “Eat it.”

Though Chang himself has waffled on the rule, a number of restaurants have more recently followed his early lead. Los Angeles chef Jordan Kahn takes the time to personally request that visitors to his art project-cum-restaurant Vespertine keep their phones off for the duration of their meal. Grenouillere restaurant in La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France, and Brooklyn’s Carthage Must Be Destroyed have posted signs or otherwise warned guests against taking photos of their meals or the venue.

This past August, Petit Jardin in Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, France made headlines for its odd list of banned items, which includes cell phones (as well as ketchup, mayonnaise, and Coca-Cola). More noteworthy, however, is how Petit Jardin enforces its cell phone ban: Following the referee-card system, waiters blow whistles at customers who are caught using their phones, likely to embarrass the customers into leaving their devices alone; after a second offense, they’re kicked out.

“There’s a concern that you end up with a dining room of people snapping photos, and that somehow impacts the dining experience of everyone,” says Peter Naccarato, co-author of the book Culinary Capital. He adds that these bans are a way for restaurants and their proprietors to control their brand and image. A potential concern is that, unlike a professional photo shoot scheduled by the restaurant, in most cases it’s a customer “that’s got a cheap cell phone taking a mediocre picture. It becomes [an issue of] quality control.”

A handful of venues have tried to find a middle ground: Instead of bullying and shaming customers about using their cell phones in social settings, some have attempted to gently nudge their clientele into willingly unplugging. This past August, bakery-cafe chain Le Pain Quotidien announced its “Disconnect to Reconnect” mission, which challenges customers to store their smartphones in boxes at communal tables in exchange for a free dessert.

Families and tourists like the idea that “they’re detoxing their minds from their technology,” according to Elaine Aquino, an assistant general manager at a Le Pain Quotidien in New York City. “They end up talking with other guests,” Aquino says. “That’s the main meaning of ‘communal table.’”

In a similar vein, Sushi Lounge in Hoboken, New Jersey, launched “Reconnect Tuesdays,” where customers receive a 20-percent discount on their bill if they’re willing to stash their phone in a Champagne bucket next to the table once their food arrives.

“[We] noticed that couples or friends or families that were coming in were not engaging,” Sushi Lounge manager Stacy Oriente says. “Everybody is illuminated in this ghastly blue light, taking pictures of food, but not really having conversations. So we were looking to do something that was a little different.”

Oriente says the restaurant now has “Tuesday night regulars” who come in for the special, and the staff has noticed a positive change in the restaurant’s ambience. “Not only are they connecting with each other, but they’re connecting with staff a bit more,” she adds.

Marco Canora, the chef-owner of Hearth in New York, has also seen success with a more amicable approach. The chef says he finds diners’ penchant for staring into their phones during meals “a little bit disheartening, because for all of us hospitality folks, the thing that drew you to the business is this love of conviviality.”

Now, each table at Hearth is equipped with a vintage cigarette or jewelry box with an “open me” note on top. Inside, guests will find a note offering them the chance to disconnect by storing their devices in the box for the duration of the meal.

“My biggest challenge was, ‘How can we implement something like this in undogmatic way, where the customer is not going to be confronted with decision fatigue?’” Canora says, adding, “We literally don’t say anything [about it] unless we’re asked by the guest, which is a total win in my mind.”

Despite not offering customers any reward for surviving a meal without touching their devices, Canora says that “between 60 and 70 percent” of customers choose to leave their phones in the box. “The vast majority of the feedback has been very positive, even if they don’t play along.”

Thomas Plante, a professor of psychology at Santa Clara University, says that chefs are going to have more luck using carrots than sticks if they’re hoping to dial back diners’ smartphone usage. “If they present it in a fun way, so that it’s reinforcing [the behavior], it could be a trend that people get on top of,” Plante says. “A lot of people know they’re addicted to phones, they know it is a problem, but they need structures in place to help them cope.”

Still, not every attempt to corral customers into letting go of their cell phones has been successful. A McDonald’s in Singapore recently installed cell phone lockers, but customers’ Instagram posts of the new amenity suggest the endeavor may not be working. At Score on Davie, a sports bar in Vancouver, cell phone lockboxes were installed at tables as a way to get customers to communicate with each other. According to general manager Rob Turpin, a handful of bar-goers got in on the gimmick when the lockboxes first appeared three years ago. But lately, the boxes tend to serve as a conversation piece rather than a conversation facilitator.

“For the most part,” Turpin says, “people are going to do what they want to do.”

Matthew Sedacca is a writer in New York.

Editors: Daniela Galarza and Whitney Filloon