A Chick-fil-A location in Maryland is offering customers free ice cream if they agree to put their phones away during their meal, part of an effort to encourage more face-to-face interaction at the table.
The promotion, introduced at the Towson Place restaurant, invites diners to take part in a “Cell Phone Coop Challenge,” where guests place their devices into a small white box—referred to as a “coop”—before eating.
“Ask a Team Member for a coop, place all phones in the coop, and enjoy your meal together without distractions,” the restaurant said in a Facebook post. “When your table finishes, let a Team Member know and everyone will receive an Icedream Cone as a reward.”
The in-store sign echoes the same idea, encouraging customers to “grab a coop and take the challenge” in exchange for a free vanilla soft-serve treat if they go their entire meal without checking their phones.
According to The Independent, the initiative is limited to individual franchise locations, as Chick-fil-A restaurants are independently owned and operated and often run their own local promotions.
The concept itself isn’t entirely new. The “cell phone coop” idea was first introduced in 2016 by a Chick-fil-A operator in Georgia, who placed the boxes on tables and rewarded customers with ice cream for staying off their devices during meals.
At the time, the goal was to encourage people to disconnect from their screens and spend more time engaging with those around them. “It just got me thinking how to get people to disconnect in order to connect,” the operator said, describing it as a way to create a “technology timeout.”
Research has suggested that phone use during meals can have a measurable impact on social experiences. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology found that participants who kept their phones visible during dinner reported lower enjoyment and higher levels of distraction compared to those who kept devices out of sight.
With initiatives like the Cell Phone Coop Challenge, some restaurants appear to be experimenting with small incentives to counter those effects—using something as simple as free ice cream to encourage customers to be more present at the table.
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