Two more large chains restaurant chains in the U.S. no longer accept cash. Tender Greens with 28 restaurants on the East and West coasts is one of a growing number of eateries that are only accepting credit and debit cards and contactless payment systems like Apple Pay or are experimenting.
Interest in cashless is clearly rising. A 2016 Federal Reserve study found the number of non-cash payments — including credit and debit cards — totaled 144 billion in 2015, having grown 5.3% annually between 2012 and 2015.
Sweetgreen, another salad chain on the coasts and part of the Midwest, and some independent restaurants have adopted the same policy. Two national chains are exploring it.
Starbucks is experimenting with cashless in one of its shops in its hometown of Seattle. Shake Shack, the gourmet hamburger chain, began testing cashless kiosks at its Astor Place restaurant in New York City in October.
Ordering seems to be faster when customers use plastic or contactless instead of dollars, saving a few seconds, but also it reduced the amount of time counting bills, reduced pilferage, no armored-car fees or fear of robberies.
Though the strategy has some risks, the benefits are clearly weighted on the side of cashless.
Tender Greens says it cut 10 seconds of ordering time by going cashless. “A customer doesn’t have to wait as long. It makes us competitive,” President Denyelle Bruno said.
Señor Sisig, a fleet of five Filipino-fusion food trucks in the San Francisco area, counts higher tips and less hassle as the benefits of having gone cashless this year. It’s “frustrating when I have valuable employees just counting cash,” founder Evan Kidera said, calculating it gobbled up more than 40 hours in total a week. “This was a way to get them back doing what they’re good at, which was food and service.” Plus, fewer customers were paying in cash anyway, having fallen from about 70% in 2010 to 19% before the change.
So far, though, the giants of the fast-food world remain unconvinced. McDonald’s spokeswoman Andrea Abate said the chain is “always looking to make things easier for our guests.”
Keep the Faith Ministry tracks cashless trends because the Bible tells us that eventually God’s people will be restricted from buying and selling for their refusal to comply with Sunday worship laws. A cashless environment makes it very easy to do.
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Revelation 13:16, 17.