Dining with the kids, dining in peace

An American company provides family-focused restaurants with solutions to help parents overcome the frustration of dining out with kids.

The founder of PlayDine conceived the idea to help parents dine in peace by setting up adult-supervised activity centres for children in restaurants that target families as a customer group. The restaurants completely outsource the management of these activity centers to PlayDine.

Incentives

Parents pay a fee of US$10 for each child to play in the PlayDine activity centres. To promote entire families to dine out, PlayDine uses a sliding fee scale for families with several children: two kids pay US$9 each; three pay US$8 each, and so on.

Qualified staff, good equipment

Trained baby-sitters with good equipment supervise the activity centre. The area is also equipped with a security camera.

In addition, parents are required to leave their cell phone numbers with PlayDine staff, so they can call them in the restaurant if the child needs the parents or caretakers, or in cases of emergency.

Toys and entertainment

PlayDine makes sure their choice of toys is age-specific. It also has interesting games and activities such as dramatic play games to keep the children occupied.

Besides dining out, families with kids can visit PlayDine activity centres for other activities such as:

• Play dates and playgroups
• Parent meetings and discussion groups
• Family and friend get-togethers
• After school snack and playtime
• Parties for kids, or grown-ups with kids (1½ - 2 hours) with food and drinks and completely supervised games, entertainment and activities
• Offers online and telephone reservations for convenience for parents

Benefits

• Increased customer base
• Featured widely in the media
• Received numerous requests from restaurants in other parts of the country
• Expansion opportunities

For more information on PlayDine, click on www.playdine.com

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