New Baldwin & Co. lounge aims to get you off your phone

The big picture: Baldwin teased the new venue on Instagram as an after-dark experience that's not a party and not a library.

• Think reading lounge combined with a wine bar.
• "Bring a book. Order a glass. Put your phone away. Be somewhere real," the post says. "This is a softer, better kind of social life."
• Devices won't be banned, but the operational hope is that people put down their phones, Baldwin manager Taylor Murphy tells Axios.

Zoom in: The plan is for NOLA Art Bar to open next month at 2128 St. Claude Ave.

• "This is a space where writers, readers, artists, entrepreneurs and dreamers can exhale and connect," Murphy says.

Zoom out: Phone-free bars and restaurants are emerging across the U.S. as people seek to disconnect from screens and devices.

• At least 11 states have restaurants or bars with some form of phone restriction or a digital-detox incentive.
• Gen Z is among those embracing analog in an effort to unplug, with 63% of the generation saying in a December 2025 ThriftBooks-commissioned survey from Talker Research that they intentionally disconnect from devices.

Case in point: Mike Salzarulo, co-owner of a Charlotte, N.C., cocktail bar, told Axios that their policy of locking customers' phones away for two hours was to "build a place that kind of forces you to connect."

• Charlotte influencer Andrea "Dre" Fox loved the experience.

• "A phone-free bar brought me an experience I rarely have, total disconnection," Fox tells Axios. "No pings to ignore, no photos to snap, just pure focus on my husband and our intense game of Scrabble. Oddly enough, I walked away feeling more connected [to him] than ever."

The bottom line: In bars, restaurants and other settings, "people are realizing that by removing the phones, some really positive things happen — mostly by people engaging with other people," Kara Nielsen, a San Francisco Bay Area-based food trend expert, tells Axios.

Go deeper: What it's like at a phone-free bar