It's interesting to me that these would be popular, because listening quietly and eating/socializing isn't common in my experience. Same is true for restaurants/bars that feature live music. People are noisy to the point of being rude to the musicians in many cases.
When we have guests at our home, none of them are interested in listening to the music - despite a living room literally festooned with audio gear and a huge variety of musical content. We no longer have friends who are interested in high-quality sound reproduction, which is really strange, because growing up, so many of my friends were into just hanging out and listening to good stuff.
One of the exceptions I found years ago was the famous Baked Potato in my childhood town of Studio City, CA. They serve, of course, baked potatoes stuffed with various things, but when the musicians start playing, the audience was quiet. Not something I've seen with recorded music at a bar/restaurant.
I suppose if the recorded music is really high quality and what customers want to hear, it would be a novel experience. It would actually be nice if these types of venues succeed and become more common.
When we grew up, there weren't so many distractions, so having a good stereo system, at home, dorm... was a big thing.
And then, ahem, we used glass appliances to achieve alternate states of consciousness that extricated our common day reality to a realm where we listened to music most carefully and enjoyed it. No need for remotes, listen to one side at a a time, then a round of refilling the vegetable glass receptacle, grabbing another round of cheap beers, and lowering the stylus on the other side -after using the Discwasher to make sure it wall nice and clean.
SIDE NOTE: CDs with their d@@mn remotes and awful sound were the beginning of the End... Michael Jackson just made it worse.
Kids today don't have books, don't have attention spans that last beyond 128 chars or a single page with 6 bulletpoints.. they walk around with "audio pods" -don't call them IEMs- in their ears, listening to crapola with a dynamic range of 0.5 db... at best. Most of them have never heard a sound system... never mind the ones we have...
Can you imagine those kids sitting for a 25 minute symphony? Will they remember NOT to clap between movements? ( one of my pet peeves ).
Listened to live recordings of pop, rock? Why do people in the fricking audience have to yell "All right! "... " Wow"... like who gives a Damn... like Zappa said, "
Shut up and play yer guitar".. or as Jim Morrison said "
Shut up and give the singer a chance".. I think of it as the Social Media generation that has no constrains, and is narcissistic in such matters.
Check out the picture of that bar in Oregon... that old guy with slippers sitting orthogonal to the speakers. And those multi horns... That's a PA speaker... how smug, the look of people who think they are better than others because they are cooler that others.
.. A baked potato restaurant... how 70s...
Hey man, can you put some of that Maui Wowie topping on my Mr. Potato... and put some Sinsemilla Brilla for my wife's Mrs. Potato... oh, pass that Tecate too, thanks dude...