Do you think parents should be able to let their kids run around unsupervised at breweries?
This question has apparently been up for debate in one U.S. community recently. Owners of the brewery that sparked the conversation, Eastside Brewing Company in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, put their foot down in a Wednesday Facebook post.
“Yes, we want to keep the brewery open to families,” they said. “However, on a weekly basis we have an experience with a family who wants to disregard our policies. Therefore, we only allow kids until 7 p.m. but after 7 p.m. we are adults only.”
How did it get to this point? Well, the brewery owners did provide a timeline. After starting the business in Buckeye Lake around 13 years ago, it kept growing. They moved into their current space in 2019 after being asked to move in by the city of Reynoldsburg.
“They had this nice big building (to us) with a great property to create a welcoming indoor/outdoor space for the community,” said the owners. “It really was a no brainer. We set out to make a place that adults could come and enjoy a fresh pint of beer in the company of others who also enjoyed a fresh pint.”
Eventually, they also brought on partners who offer food, SLAB and Smash N Eatz. With those partnerships, more families began visiting the brewery.
“Although things have been going very well for us, there is one sore spot, that seems to come back again and again. Unsupervised children,” the owners said. “It’s not that we don’t like kids. We manufacture alcohol. Our thoughts about production, marketing, the ambiance, are all geared toward providing this product for our customers to enjoy. We have created an environment that appeals to adults.”
While they added that many families come with children who are respectful, they said others haven’t been. For example, they said that some families allow their kids to play in the brewery’s outdoor area, throwing frisbees and kicking balls. Others have allegedly dug up rocks in the beer garden, creating hazards, harassed dogs from a neighboring property, broken a ping pong table, thrown corn hole bags on the roof and nearly caused porch swing’s bolts to fall out.
That’s all with signs posted in the establishment regarding its policies.
“There is a small group of adults who call me a d***head, an a**hole, and a child hater among others,” the Facebook post said.
All of these occurrences eventually led to the adults-only rule after 7 p.m. at the brewery. As for the Facebook post itself, they said it went up after they received threats about the new policies.
“Some breweries are built for kids. They want you to bring the family and they have things for them to do while they are there,” the owners explained. “Please understand, this is not us. We have built a space centered on adults having a conversation and a pint and a bite to eat.”
Most of the responses to the post were positive, with people supporting the business owner’s right to run the establishment how they want. Many also said they wanted a place to go where they would not have to worry about children, while some said they would be avoiding the establishment due to the new rule.
Eastside Brewing Company’s complaints aren’t the first about unruly children to gain traction online. For example, a TikTok creator went viral just this week for commenting on unruly kids who attended a concert for the artist Sombr in Washington D.C.
“Every so often, a provocative social media post sets off predictably polarizing discourse about the presence of children in daily life,” CNN reported in 2024.
At the same time, children and young adults are living lives increasingly shaped by digital experiences rather than real-world ones. This year, Harris polling found that 69% of 8 to 12-year-olds say they stayed up past their bedtime using a phone, tablet/iPad and/or video game consoles and 61% had not made plans with friends without adults helping them, though 72% said they would rather spend most of their time together doing things in-person, without screens.
Perhaps a business filled with alcohol just isn’t the right venue for kids to get that in-person time they crave. At least not this one in Ohio.