Breast-feeding moms plan ‘nurse-in’ at West Side Cafe
The last time West Side Cafe on Camp Bowie Boulevard made big news it was because a waitress paid for a couple’s meal after discovering that they had lost their 9-week-old daughter. CBS 11 did a story on it, and it got attention on national and international websites.
Now the west Fort Worth diner is dealing with a different kind of attention, but both sides are trying to turn what started out as a dispute into a good thing.
This Saturday, a group of breast-feeding moms will hold a “Nurse-In” at the restaurant. It was originally planned as a protest, but after a nursing mom and the restaurant’s owner had some discussions, it is now more of a consciousness-raising event.
Things started Sunday when Rebecca Olson, a nursing mom, was breast-feeding her 3-week-old baby boy at the cafe when a manager tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to cover the child up.
Olson, who is a regular customer at the restaurant (it’s one of her mom’s favorites), later posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page that she was disappointed and shocked after the incident, and that she would never eat there again. “I also wanted to inform West Side Cafe that it is ILLEGAL for them to ask a mother nursing her child to cver up,” she wrote.
That brought a response from the restaurant, apparently written by the same manager, who pointed out that she had not asked Olson to stop breast-feeding, only to “cover up your completely exposed breast.” “I’m a mother that also breast-fed my kids, but I showed more modesty, decency and respect for others when I did it.” The post contended that while it’s illegal to ask a mom to stop breast-feeding, asking a mother to cover up is not against the law in Texas.
Neither side expected what happened next.
“It just all kind of blew up way more than I anticipated,” Olson says. “I was upset and I wrote a review and it went from a review to everybody was talking about it and was messaging people and it was getting shared.”
The restaurant received so many other comments on Facebook that ultimately the Facebook page was taken down. The incident caught the attention of breast-feeding moms and advocates outside of Fort Worth; several one-star reviews have appeared on Yelp!, some of them from DFW, but some from as far away as Oakland, California., and Lutz, Florida.
Tracey Sanford, owner of West Side Cafe, says that the restaurant actually didn’t have a policy about breast-feeding, and that he sees moms breast-feeding there every day. But the outcry led him to start a policy allowing open breast-feeding. He also apologized to Olson about the incident.
“I reached out to [Olson] and had a great conversation with her,” Sanford says. “I wanted to make sure that we were on the same page about everything. She understood and I understood.”
When he heard about plans for the Nurse-In, Sanford asked Olson to make it a positive event, to come in, have food, and tip the waitresses, many of whom are single mothers.
“I said bring ’em on in, we can get some more publicity for your cause, support your cause, bring more awareness to it,” Sanford says. “I don’t have a problem with any of that.”
Olson says that Sanford’s apology meant a lot to her.
“He apologized to me, and every nursing mom,” Olson wrote on the Nurse-In’s Facebook page. “He sounded to be very sincere in his apology and welcomed us to fill his restaurant with nursing babies covered & uncovered.”
She says that she doesn’t want any problems at Saturday’s Nurse-In. “I just want more people to see how it’s affected both sides,” she says. “It affected me as a mother and it affected him as a business owner.”
Olson says she wants people to see that it doesn’t matter how nursing moms nurse their babies, as long as their babies are fed. She also says she doesn’t want anyone to think badly of the manager who asked her to cover her baby, because the manager was very polite about it. But Olson was embarrassed by the attention it attracted in the restaurant.
“I’m over here just trying to feed my child,” she says. “I’m not trying to do anything indecent or be indecent. I promise you, if there was another way to breast-feed, I’d be all over it.” She says she used a cover when she breast-fed her first child, but it actually drew more attention than nursing uncovered.
West Side Cafe is not known for controversy. According to Star-Telegram archives, Fort Worth sportswriting legend Dan Jenkins is a fan of its chicken-fried steak, which is good enough that the owner of Dallas’ Norma’s Cafe made it a stop on a tour for last year’s Texas Chicken-Fried Steak Day in October. Many online reviews note the photos of military personnel that line the restaurant’s walls. The restaurant often comes up in the Star-Telegram’s “Cheers and Jeers” feature as the kind of place where diners unexpectedly pay for other people’s meals.
On the Nurse-In Facebook page, Olson suggests that the moms meet at noon Saturday in the parking lot, then go in at 12:15 “hopefully fill the place up [and] tip our waitresses real nice and enjoy ourselves.”
“When you’re so passionate about something, the best way to go about it isn’t by being ugly, but by being peaceful,” she says. “Talk to people and raise awareness instead of attacking people.”
This story was originally published May 18, 2016 at 1:48 PM with the headline "Breast-feeding moms plan ‘nurse-in’ at West Side Cafe."