Ideally, one could ban the selfish and irresponsible parents who won’t control their children, but that’s not practical, because by the time you know who they are, its too late.
“we don’t like your kind”. Works for me. I fired clients that weren’t good enough to be clients. One woman was a client for 27 years and got stupid…..byee, trouble.
My children have been going to restaurants once a week since they were in high chairs.
When they were young, we took them to low budget, kid friendly places. We taught them proper table manners, etiquette, and treating servers with respect.
We also introduced them to opera and live theater through the children’s opera programs and community theater matinee productions. I made it a point to discuss proper behavior on the way to both venues and on the way home we would talk about the production, their favorite parts, what they disliked, etc. Invariably, they would remark on how poorly behaved the other children were. I made sure to give them lots of praise on how well they behaved and how proud I was of them.
As they got older (age ranges of 10, 8, and 4), we started taking them to upscale restaurants and dressed finely for Michelin Star meals and an evening at the opera or theater. They were on their best behavior automatically because I raised them that way.
I have never been embarrassed by my children. They knew better than to act like heathens.
They still enjoy going out to eat, shows, opera, and the theater.
A friend of mine owns a restaurant. He does have a policy which says no children under 12 on Friday and Saturday nights. He feels that grownups should be able to have a date night and not have to listen to kids. There were no complaints by the community, so much so that on Friday and Saturday nights the restaurant is packed.
He even went so far as to put up a sign for diners that if they have teenage kids who want to babysit and earn a few bucks, they can reach out. Apparently it has worked very well.
When given lemons, make lemmonade.