Hacker News Reader

Comment by tonyb | Hacker News Reader

Going "cash-less" is a growing trend in the restaurant world. I know several restaurant owners that are moving that direction for the reasons you listed. Time is one of the biggest ones, you have to have someone (normally a manager) dedicated to cash management before opening and after closing.

View on HN

>> Time is one of the biggest ones, you have to have someone (normally a manager) dedicated to cash management before opening and after closing.

When I eat with a group of people, it's very common that I'm the only one who pays cash. It's also very common that taking care of my bill is the fastest of them all. It's easiest on the wait-persons time. But since the owners generally fuck over the wait staff anyway, it's no surprise that they don't care about their time.

In America, paying with cash is so much faster because of the still way too common and outdated process for credit cards: Bring bill to customer > walk away while they review > return to collect card > go to fixed portal to run transaction > return to customer with receipt > walk away again > return to collect receipt with tip amount

More restaurants need to start adopting handheld terminals for waitstaff, which reduces the whole process to 1 step and makes it faster than cash since they do not need to go fetch change.

My wife an I frequently eat at a couple places that have touch-screen terminals (I think called Ziosk?) on them. While you're eating, you can use them to order drinks or pay to play tablet games, but you can also pay your bill without any interaction with the wait staff. They're quite the time saver.

Also, it helps prevent credit card skimming since you can always see the card which is why I think it is even a law in some countries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com