Furious mum slams restaurant after it charged her schoolgirl daughter, 9, adult prices because she was ‘too tall’
Bosses charged the Fox family for an adult meal because Atiya Fox was four inches taller than average
A NINE-year-old girl was forced to pay full adult price for a buffet meal - because she was deemed "too tall".
Atiya Fox was told she was four inches taller than the average child's height for her age meaning she would have to pay £8.99 instead of £5.99.
Her furious mum Rebecca Fox, 30, has slammed the tight-fisted staff at Nines Global Buffet for upsetting her little girl after walking out of the Cambridge Leisure Park restaurant without paying.
"I'm furious about it," said the mum-of-three.
"Atiya is a tall girl, but she's only nine, and she was very upset.
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"There was some kind of a measuring tool next to the till, and the staff said that because she was taller than the rule, she didn't qualify for the child rate, and that we'd have to pay for her as an adult.
We were going to go somewhere else, but Atiya was so upset, she kept saying, 'what if they think I'm too tall there as well?
Rebecca Fox
"It's not about the extra money, it's simply that they wouldn't accept she was a child.
"The staff just kept saying that they were completely in the right, which obviously they were not."
Ms Fox, who also has a two-year-old daughter, Ruth, and 10-month-old daughter, Ava, said the family, who live at Haddenham, Cambs., had their day ruined.
Atiya, who is four feet 11 inches, was so distressed by the height row that she refused to go to another restaurant with her family over fears they would deem her "too tall" as well.
The family tried to contact the company's head office but have not received a satisfactory response.
Ms Fox asked the manager how much they would charge an adult who was under 140cm and this apparently fell on deaf ears.
A spokeswoman for Nines said: "We completely understand that people might be upset by this, but Nines is such a big restaurant, and gets so busy, that the rule needs to be in place.
"Customers can eat as much as they like once they have paid, and it's sometimes difficult for staff on the door to differentiate between adults and children, so there has to be a means of regulating.
"Many buffet restaurants around the UK use this system because many children do not have proof of age."
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