Be present
Everyone at the table, actually at the table.
A box that holds the phones while you eat. Everyone puts one in, everyone enters one digit — so nobody can open it alone. For restaurants, and for one dinner a week at home.
Tap four digits — one for each person at the table.
How it works
No policy. No sign on the door. No host arguing with anybody. Your server sets it down with the menus and says one sentence.
Four slots, front-loading. Nobody has to reach across the table or hand anything to staff.
The box goes around the table. Each person enters a number, shielded, and passes it on. Nobody knows the whole code.
Pick a timer, or lock it for the whole meal. The bolt throws with a sound people remember.
The timer expires and it releases. Want out early? You'll have to ask everyone for their number — out loud.
Why now
This isn't a hunch. Restaurants across the country are already doing this — badly, with wooden boxes and honor systems. Latchkin is the version that actually works on a busy floor.
Growth in phone-free events worldwide in a single year.
EventbriteThe year Chick-fil-A started putting phone boxes on tables. They're still expanding it.
Company programHave restaurants or bars running phone restrictions today.
AxiosOf diners try somewhere new because a friend told them to.
QuestexFor operators
Pair it with a discount — lock the box, 20% off — and give people a reason to come in on the night they wouldn't have.
A host is $150–185 a night, plus prizes. Every week, forever. A set of four Latchkins is $399, once.
The box stays on the table and the guest keeps control. You take no custody, so you take no risk.
We print it on a card. There's no door policy to enforce and nothing for anyone to argue about.
Under the IRS de minimis safe harbor, anything under $2,500 an item is written off the year you buy it.
At home
Latchkin was built for restaurants. The people who keep asking us for one are families.
Every night is a rule. Rules get broken, argued about, and quietly abandoned by March. One night is a ritual, and rituals get defended — often hardest by the person you expected to fight it.
Pick the night that is already yours. Sunday, Taco Tuesday, whatever the house calls it. That is the only decision that matters.
Everyone at the table enters one digit of the code. That means the parent who suggested it cannot quietly unlock it to check something for two seconds.
Kids notice that immediately. It is the difference between a rule handed down and a deal everyone signed.
Pick your night and put the box in the middle of the table. Everyone drops a phone in before anyone sits down.
Each person enters one digit. Four people, four numbers, and no single person holds the whole code.
Pull a card from the slot on the lid when the table goes quiet. Answer it, then pass the deck to your left.
The first ten minutes are the hard part. When the thing you would normally look at is locked in a box, nobody knows what to say. That is what the cards are for — forty prompts that give the table somewhere to start. Four decks: family, friends, first date, and one for the table at work.
Waitlist
We are still finishing the box. Rather than take your money for something we cannot ship, put your name down and we will come to you first when the first run is ready.
Planned line-up and expected pricing. Both may move before launch.
Expected $119
One box, holds four phones. For a kitchen table or a single restaurant table.
Expected $399
Four boxes, two override keys, table tents and server scripts. Enough to run one section on one night.
Expected $1,199
Twelve boxes, four keys, full signage and the campaign kit for a weekly Latchkin Night.
Expected $19
Forty conversation prompts for the slot on the lid. Four decks: family, friends, first date, work.
Where we are
Latchkin is new. Rather than dress this page in quotes we made up, here is exactly what we're measuring in the first venues — and we'll publish it either way.
How many tables say yes when a server offers the box. Nobody in this category has published that number.
How many tables that lock it make it all the way to the end of the meal without asking for it back.
What participating tables spend against the rest of the section on the same night. The number an owner actually cares about.
If you'd like your room to be one of the first, the pilot below is free and there's nothing to sign.
Pilot program
We're placing the first units with a small number of restaurants. You run them on your slow night. If they're collecting dust in four weeks, we come collect them.
All we ask in return is a rough sense of whether tables went for it — and whether the checks looked any different.
Questions
The box never leaves the table — it's always within arm's reach. It opens on its own when the timer expires, it opens on the code, staff have an override key, and it force-releases after two and a half hours regardless. Nobody's phone gets stuck.
No. It's offered table by table, never venue-wide. The server sets it down, asks once, and drops it if the answer is no. There's no door policy and no sign, so nobody has to explain themselves or opt out of anything.
No, deliberately. Phones still ring inside the box. Blocking signal would create a real safety problem and it isn't what makes the product work — the ritual is.
They keep it. Because participation is per table and per person, nobody has to disclose anything or ask for an exception — they simply don't put their phone in.
None of the three. It runs on four AA batteries for about two years, and the battery door is on the outside so a dead battery never traps anything. There's no app to download and nothing to connect.
Nothing — the timer releases it anyway. The code is for opening early, not for opening at all.
Most pair it with a discount on their slowest night: lock the box for the meal, get 20% off. Some run it as a game with a leaderboard. Some just leave it on the table and let people find it.
Thirty days, no questions. If it doesn't work in your room, send it back.