Although the ordinance does not prohibit a restaurant’s ability to sell, or a customer’s ability to purchase, a substitute or alternative beverage instead of milk or water, patrons will not be offered sodas, fruit juices or any other beverages with children’s meals.

In addition, restaurants that sell kids’ meals must complete an annual self-certification verifying that if they offer children’s meals, they comply with the provisions of the ordinance. Establishments that continue to offer beverages with children’s meals that are not milk or water stand to be fined $100 or more, depending on the number of violations.

The new policy aims to “increase access to healthy beverages for children” and was initially proposed by First 5 Yolo, a children and families commission.

Dr. Harold Goldstein, the executive director of the California Center for Public Health Policy, praised the requirement in a statement release:

“The city of Davis took a bold stand for children’s health last night and in so doing established itself as a national public health leader. While communities all over the country wrestle with the disastrous consequences of growing childhood obesity and diabetes epidemics, Davis drew a line in the sand. The city council showed the powerful role cities can play by passing an ordinance requiring restaurants to serve water or milk as the default beverage in children’s meals. This means that the healthy beverage choice is now the easy beverage choice in Davis restaurants.”

Dr. Goldstein also stated that sugary drinks are the “single largest source of excess calories in our kids’ diets, providing nearly half of their daily sugar intake.” He pointed to restaurants as “responsible for about a quarter of children’s caloric intake.” Parents at restaurants “will now have to ask for soda specifically if they want to serve their child liquid candy instead of a healthy beverage.”

Matt Sutton, vice president of government affairs and public policy for the California Restaurant Association, says policies like these “oversimplify the issue” of healthy choice.

“Restaurants have made a lot of headway in offering a wide selection of menu items to accommodate consumer choice, such as salads and apples with meals,” he told me. “We’ve made all kinds of changes to help address the concern. However, there is no one silver bullet.”

Sutton said kids’ meals are fairly common throughout many restaurants, fast food and sit-down alike, and are generally packed under one price. This ordinance could “have a pretty big impact” on pricing and restaurant operations.

He also pointed to Governor Jerry Brown’s latest executive order mandating water reductions, which bans restaurants from offering water unless patrons specifically request. This is a bit of a “head scratcher,” he told me, as the new Davis ordinance requires restaurants to offer water with kids’ meals.

The policy goes into effect September 1, 2015.

Or just a trick that allows those businesses to charge more than they normally would without prompting grousing from their customers?

Whatever the truth is, L.A. Weekly notes an intriguing trend may now be emerging in Los Angeles.

Back when Republique opened late last year, the most hotly debated aspect of the restaurant was not the food or the redesign of the iconic building in which it’s housed, but rather the 3% surcharge added to all checks to cover healthcare for the restaurant’s employees.

On Yelp and in comments on this website and others, customers vowed never to give the restaurant their business. Many claimed the surcharge was politically motivated. Others wondered why the restaurant didn’t simply roll the cost of employee healthcare into menu prices to avoid the controversy. 

Now another high profile restaurant group in L.A. has decided to follow the same path. The Lucques Group, Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne’s group of restaurants that includes Lucques, Tavern and A.O.C., as well as a number of offshoots of those businesses, sent out a press release over the weekend announcing that beginning on Sept. 1, they too would be adding a 3% charge on all bills in order to pay for employee health insurance.

They also name a number of other restauranteurs that they worked with to create a plan to offer coverage, intimating that these folks, too, would be adding a 3% charge. Those names include Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan of Rustic Canyon, Josiah Citrin of Mélisse, and David Lentz of The Hungry Cat.

This has led to grousing. Here’s a Yelp review cited by L.A. Weekly in a previous article about Republique:

I would have given this restaurant 5 stars, but I am annoyed by the 3% Employee Health Care charge. This is going to eventually nip the owner in the rear. People will get sick of this really quick; especially considering that there are MANY more better places to eat in LA besides this place. It is not MY responsibility to take care of YOUR employee’s healthcare. That is YOUR job.

Of course, it is the customer’s job to pay for a restaurant’s costs. It appears some would rather not know regulation has a price tag, and prefer that the cost just be rolled into the price of entrees, appetizers and drinks.

But on the L.A. restaurant scene, the trend is to be like the gasoline stations that break out taxes per gallon in signage right at the pumps. Good.

When it comes to government regulation, there’s no better place to remind people of Robert Heinlein’s adage “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” then at a restaurant.

The madcap character of the turnaround captured the same sense of absurdity that critics said pervaded the intended ban. The journey from Pan’s original bill to its hurried demise laid bare some of the more unflattering trends in politics as usual, from the mechanics of contemporary lawmaking to the ways around regulatory enforcement.

Legislators often strive to beat a challenge to the punch by passing laws as quickly as possible. In the absence of strong opposition from the lobbyists and corporations who traditionally mobilize to push for or against a particular scheme, the path to new laws can be fast and smooth. “The law apparently sneaked its way through both houses of the Legislature in 2013 unbeknownst to most small restaurant and bar owners,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “It wasn’t until January, after the law was already in effect, that most businesses got wind of the rule.”

Smaller businesses hit harder

For major corporations in the food industry, such as Subway, glove use is already standard policy. That left smaller businesses unaware of the ban plan — a problem exacerbated by the gap between the law’s winter implementation and summer enforcement.

Sushi restaurants and bars, catering to more selective and artisanal-friendly patrons, found themselves facing major obstacles to the presentation and preparation of their products. Not only do latex gloves make it more difficult and less appealing to craft and serve raw fish or custom cocktails; they also come at a substantial cost.

The manager of one high-end bar in San Francisco anticipated going through some 175 gloves per shift, according to The Washington Post. Joshua Miller, an Alameda bartender, told the Los Angeles Times that more than glove counts would have driven up costs. “Having to change gloves constantly slows down service, and for a busy bar, time is money,” he said.

For some economists, that kind of unpleasant regulatory surprise is characteristic of the unanticipated consequences officeholders can usher in on the heels of hasty, instinct-driven lawmaking.

A political hornet’s nest

Beyond the lessons of economics, the repealed glove ban gave restauranteurs an opportunity to shed light on the strange psychological effects of the law. Sacramento chef Ravin Patel told the Associated Press that the best way to cope with its demands was simply to pretend. “It just becomes common practice that you don’t touch food as much,” he said. “When the health inspector comes, you slap on a bunch of gloves.”

What’s more, the legislation failed to take into account the politics of environmentalism. Another San Francisco entrepreneur, Remy Nelson, told the Chronicle in March that his Mojo Bicycle Cafe would need 50,000 gloves a year — simply to ready and serve bagels. Amid California cities’ bans on plastic bags, the sudden proliferation of disposable gloves made for an awkward, illogical contrast.

Superficial science

Finally, the glove ordeal underscored how politics can play fast and loose with scientific evidence and rigor. As the AP reports, the ban can be traced back to federal research on mitigating the risks of foodborne illness. One study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded that norovirus outbreaks originating in food were spread most often by those who handled food without gloves.

But now, Pan has told the AP, “It’s not about whether you wear gloves or not. It’s about how clean the surfaces are. We need to have the conversation go back to, ‘This is about food safety.'”

“Unfortunately the focus from last year’s law was just on gloves, and until we repeal the glove law we can’t have a meaningful stakeholder discussion on food safety in the restaurant industry,” the Times quoted Pan separately.

For political scientists, the episode may carry broader lessons about how legislators can better look before they leap. But in Sacramento, relief over the scuttled ban seems so universal that lawmakers appear ready to act as if the intended ban had simply never happened.