Amsterdam is having a hard time these days knowing on which front it wants to fight overtourism, with measures to ban new hotels, cut river cruise visits in half, ban ocean cruises, discourage stag and hen parties, and now, a limit on how long you can wait for fries.
City officials have added a new clause to the operating permit for a frites stand, Fabel Frites, made instantly famous on TikTok, placing a limit on the size of the queue waiting for their potatoes. Under the new rule, if more than 10 people have ordered and paid but not been served, no new orders can be taken until the waiting customers have been served.
The city says it’s responding to complaints from neighboring shops and local residents, although the shop says it is already handling the problem by hiring its own line monitors. They’ve now taken the city to court.
TikTok-driven queues are apparently a problem elsewhere in the city as well, with at least one cannabis shop also hiring crowd minders.
