This Restaurant's Kids-Meal Deal From The '80s Still Makes Us Cringe

In its 1970s and '80s heyday, Ground Round restaurant was everything that kids loved about going out to eat: colorful mascots, ice cream sundaes served in baseball caps, TVs playing cartoons, and free popcorn — all of which even made it a go-to spot for kids birthday parties. But for all the fun that accompanied a trip to Ground Round, its Pay What You Weigh promotion gave diners a reason to visit that's a little unusual by today's standards.

Restaurants entice diners with unique promotions all the time, with free birthday meals, happy hour deals, seasonal specialties, and couples discounts among them. But the Pay What You Weigh promotion might have been in a class all its own. The promotion invited kids to step on a scale and pay just one penny per pound for their meal with the purchase of an adult entrée. It offered an easy way for a family to eat out at a discount, and kids could enjoy their favorite meals for a couple dollars at most.

Ground Round filed for bankruptcy in 2004, and today, as a largely forgotten restaurant chain, only a few locations remain across the U.S. The Pay What You Weigh promotion remains as recently as 2025 with the penny-per-pound for kids under 12 parameters, though the chain notes that scale use is optional.

The Pay What You Weigh promotion might have been easy on parents' wallets, but it wasn't always a hit with kids. As writer Sadie Stein of The Paris Review remembers, stepping on the scale wasn't a fun experience: "I do recall, clearly, the humiliation of the weighing-in. This was technically the one time where our incredible runtiness was an asset, at least from my parents' perspective, but I have stinging memories of mounting the scale and having some teenager slap a sticker to my shirt with a number on it."

Even the premise sounds downright nuts to some who remember eating there. As some Reddit commenters have pointed out, while parents may have gotten a bargain with these promotions, kids who weighed more ultimately cost more. Nowadays, restaurants have come under fire for weight-based promotions with experts pointing out that deals like these amount to body shaming.

Ground Round's birthday parties and peanut shells scattered on the floor may bring back fond memories of the 1970s and 1980s. But sometimes nostalgia only goes so far, and Pay What You Weigh is one promotion we're happy to leave in the past. Luckily, families looking for an affordable meal out can still find plenty of restaurants serving up family-friendly favorites.