Uh — this is making us feel uncomfy. A restaurant in China is running a promotion where skinny customers can earn a free meal. If customers can fit through one of a series of entrances designed for thin people, they can win a prize.
The restaurant is called Mr Zhao La Chufang and is located in China’s eastern Shandong province. Inside, customers are greeted with a series of metal bars that frame gaps that customers are asked to slide through. The restaurant is calling it “the metal gate challenge,” according to Facebook page Weird Wild World.
Depending on which tier a customer can slide through, they are rewarded with a prize.
If one can slide through the smallest 6-inch gap, they get a free meal and beer. Making it through the 7-inch gap earns a customer five beers for their table. And entering through the more managable 10-inch gap gets a person a free beer.
But if you have to enter the restaurant through the gaps wider than 10 inches, you’re pretty much fat-shamed by the employees. The 12-inch gap has no reward attached to it, but rather, an insult. Customers are told, “Your figure is just average,” and “You shouldn’t ask for more.” The final and easiest to gap to get through comes with the question, “Are you sure you should be drinking beer?” Yikes!
The restaurant’s owner, Zhao Lang, said the challenge began when pollen forced him to close the restaurant’s door halfway, requiring customers to squeeze through the entrance. Lang also noted that since beginning the metal gate challenge, only women have succeeded in entering through the smallest 6-inch gap.
[fm_youtube url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONCgkc8ObZc"]Lang hopes the challenge will remind people to think before they eat, but in our opinion, we’re not sure if it’s up to Lang to encourage his customers to diet. There are other ways to encourage healthy eating — such as serving healthier dishes — rather than asking customers to squeeze through tiny door frames and then shaming them if they can’t fit.
Thoughts?
