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Can I see some ID? Two restaurants mistakenly serve alcohol to toddlers

What's in that sippy cup? In two separate incidents, chain restaurants have recently mistakenly served alcohol to toddlers. What do you think of this bizarre trend?By Jennifer Langston, TODAY Moms contributorWhat on earth is wrong with a restaurant that can’t tell the difference between apple juice and a margarita? Or one that serves sangria to a child young enough to drink from a sippy cup?Impr

What's in that sippy cup? In two separate incidents, chain restaurants have recently mistakenly served alcohol to toddlers. What do you think of this bizarre trend?

By Jennifer Langston, TODAY Moms contributor

What on earth is wrong with a restaurant that can’t tell the difference between apple juice and a margarita? Or one that serves sangria to a child young enough to drink from a sippy cup?

Improbably, two mix-ups have now surfaced in which restaurants recently served toddlers alcoholic drinks instead of juice—one at a Michigan Applebee’s and another at a Florida Olive Garden. Both chains have apologized, and promised that kids won’t be leaving their restaurants drunk anymore. That seems like a pretty low bar to meet.

The second case came to light after Jill Van Heest read about the Applebee’s incident outside Detroit last week. (In case you missed it, 15-month old Dominic Dill-Reese was served an alcoholic margarita instead of apple juice after someone mislabeled the margarita mix, police said.)

Van Heest’s family had an eerily similar experience. As she told the Orlando Sentinel, she ordered an orange juice for her 2-year-old son Nikolai at a Lakeland, Fla., Olive Garden on March 31. After a half an hour, a waiter came and took his cup away, and she noticed her toddler’s eyes were dilated and red. When she demanded to known what had been in the cup, she was told her child had been served tropical sangria, a mix of wine, pineapple juice and orange juice.

“How disorganized does a bar need to be to serve a kid alcohol?” Nikolai’s mom asked in this Tampa Tribune story.

The two tots were visibly drunk, according to reports from their moms, waving to people, nodding off, and trying to ride a plastic hospital chair like a horse. Both children were treated at hospitals and appear to be fine. But doctors told one of the moms that her child could have died if he’d drunk the whole cup.

Olive Garden has said it will now make individual sangrias from scratch instead of storing them in pitchers. Applebee’s plans to retrain workers on labeling drinks and change the way its restaurants serve juice to children, pouring from single serve containers only. 

Still, you might want to check your child’s sippy cup, just to be sure.