CASHLESS MAKES ECONOMIC SENSE

CASH may be king for customers with a wallet full of bills, but a growing number of restaurants find accepting paper money just isn’t worth it anymore. Starbucks operates one cashless store in Seattle. Sweetgreen, a seasonal salad spot with about 100 US locations, went cash-free last year. Fast-casual chain Chopt Creative Salad, which piloted its first cashless restaurant in January, will have six in Manhattan before the new year. “We were responding to consumer demand. They told us over time that speed is of the utmost importance,” said Chopt chief executive Nick Marsh. Before going cashless, the cashiers couldn’t keep up with the fast pace of food prep, resulting in a “bottleneck at the registers”. Burdens brought on by cash go beyond the checkout line. As minimum wages rise across the US, paying employees to count, secure and transport cash is becoming a cost that some restaurants say they can’t afford. Convenience-hungry consumers used to instant gratification want to get what they ordered as fast as possible – and the customer fumbling with a purse slows that down. For Chopt, the cashless model started at the salad chain’s West 51st Street location in Manhattan, where Marsh said less than 10 percent of transactions were cash previously. As efficiency improved, two other New York City restaurants went cashless in “rapid succession”. For Hill Country Barbecue Market in Washington DC, cash stopped making economic sense. After losing almost $60 000 (R875 607) in burglaries this year, making the switch was necessary.