Uptown Fare, Park City Restaurant, Employs Bouncer To Keep Out Non-Locals During Sundance

For the fifth year in a row, Uptown Fare, a small soup-and-sandwich eatery in the heart of Park City, Utah, will turn out-of-towners away at the door during the duration of the Sundance Film Festival.

The restaurant employs a bouncer to enforce the rule, and locals must give a password to be allowed to enter, owner Karleen Reilly told The Huffington Post over the phone Wednesday.

"I don't really have room for all of them," Reilly told HuffPost about the estimated 50,000 people who come into Park City for the festival. "We only make one sandwich at a time and I can't make ten or fifteen to go at once."

Reilly said she used to close Uptown Fare completely during the festival -- which will take place from Jan. 17 to Jan. 27 this year -- but in 2009, she had the idea to simply deny entrance to the industry professionals who flood the town every January, allowing her to still turn a profit during the 10 days of Sundance's festivities.

Reilly, who's owned Uptown Fare for the 13 years it's been in open, lamented that other restaurants and coffee shops in Park City allow big businesses, such as Dasani and Honda, to rent them out during Sundance, which prevents residents from enjoying their favorite local spots.

But she acknowledged that there's one big incentive: "People can make rent for 12 months if they sell out," Reilly said.

Though Reilly told local CBS affiliate KUTV that "it's the most annoying weekend of all," she did, however, say she'd make an exception to her rule for Tom Cruise.

The Sundance Film Festival is an annual festival in Park City Utah where independent films have historically been discovered by commercial distributors. The festival is run by the non-profit Sundance Institute which was founded in 1981.

Passes to the 10-day festival cost between $1,500 and $3,000. Tickets for individual movie screenings are $15 each but are extremely limited for the first half of the festival, according to Sundance's website.

Sundance offers some festival passes to Utah residents ahead of the general public and offers passes to movie screenings outside of Park City that cannot be purchased by those without a Utah driver's license or state ID.

(h/t Salt Lake Tribune)