This is very strange. Maybe this would work in USA(?) but in many countries you're basically telling an overwhelming majority of your potential customers "you can't pay for things here". No one carries cash - it's all EFTPOS or CC. I don't see how cash-only supports the no screens policy. It feels entirely orthogonal.
Same goes for the weird anti-car crusade. If you don't have parking, that's fine. No need to make it a thing.
If you can't pay with cash, you're welcome to wash a load of dishes.
Well this sticking to the rules no matter what is where you lose my sympathy. This is like TSA agressively checking toddlers and old grannies for making the scanner go beep or having some water, because, hey, if the scanner beeps they might be terrorists.
Just like screens are a new thing, this inflexible robot-like-behavior is also new, and geez, I wish you could also fight the second one.
Sure payment terminals are screens, but it's not like they're addictive screens where you get tweets or text messages...
Cash-only places are less common than they used to be, but there are still some really popular places to eat near me. And they’re popular for a good reason: they provide excellent food/service, and delivery services can’t insert themselves into the business model. It means I have to pass an ATM that day, but it’s a perfectly viable model.
If I’m going to a place called no screens cafe, I’d personally appreciate the complete commitment to the endeavor. If nothing else, it’s an invitation to ponder the frictionless ways we part with our money almost everywhere else.
Comparing “cash only” to “aggressive TSA” seems like a rather stretched analogy.
Imagine a potential patron to this (afaik still hypothetical) cafe has a hypothetical medical device attached to her that has a monitoring screen. Should she be allowed in, or not? Cut-and-dry no, easy enough, right? Who needs to be flexible?
OP's idea of no screens is so people aren't glued to digital entertainment, it's not like a pay terminal screen (or a medical device's status display) is digital entertainment..
Such a place may not be for everyone and to me that seems fine. Camping is also not for everyone and that is also fine.
A cash only stance makes sense because paying for things will happen all day, every day. If your goal is no screens and that goal is in your name, that’s an impactful step to take.
If someone has a hypothetical medical device with a screen (do you have one in mind?) I’m sure the owners of such an establishment would seek to find ways to accommodate. It’s an edge case and not likely to impact the overall atmosphere.
But to your point, this is hypothetical. I’d rather that such a place exists and then learns how to deal with edge cases than not exist at all.
I have a relative who has heart rhythm anomalies that uses an iWatch with an upgraded band (Kardia) for monitoring.
Prior to that it was a smart phone that had some ekg sensors that did a phone home/hospital if there were any anomalous readings and reporting periodic summaries (there was an occasional anomaly that was detected in an unrelated hospital stay but they didn't know how frequently this anomaly occurred - 1/week its a "be aware and continue to monitor" to 1/hour its a "go to the hospital and have some surgery - but it has to be done while the nerve is doing its thing").
The thing is that smart watches and phones are being used for real time monitoring of medal issues and they have screens.
Or even for a less problematic situation, I have my iWatch set to alert me if the decibel level is above a threshold. While a cafe is less likely to get above that level this is still something that I pay attention to and have occasionally found that a pub that I go to can get louder than I had otherwise realized.
Yep. I agree we should accommodate medically necessary exceptions. Also, anyone can step out of the cafe to use their screen (medically necessary or not) at any time.
I feel like there are still compromises. Especially for a cafe. Did you walk to the camp site, or drive 95% of the way there? This cafe will probably have electricity and clean tap water and machines to heat up the water and make coffee. Sure someone else might attempt an even more Amish cafe (even some Amish use electricity, AFAIK), or one run by a hippie might avoid having a microwave because they think microwave-heated-food are as harmful as nuclear radiation.
Honestly if he wants to make it cash only with the excuse that digital payments are so painless you don't even notice your spending, I could sign on to that. But if it's because "pay terminals have screens", then that's a level of zealotry that I'd be wary of. Imagine if he can only get microwaves with LCD screens for his cafe, so they have to work around that as well...
One of the best things about the cash only places I frequent is that they don’t have to deal with delivery services injecting themselves into the business model and consuming kitchen capacity for people not actually present.
This leads to faster service overall and at worst the speed of service slows down proportionally to the number of customers at the location at any given point.
And usually these places are family run so you’re always seeing the same folks behind the counter and they actually care.
All combined, these factors lead to the elevated status that many ascribe to cash only places.
But my perception of business's that don't take card these days (post pandemic at least) is that they're more likely to be slightly dodgy and skimming the books. That or stubbornly stuck in there ways.
"Ok, here's my money."
Or you just leave money on the table and go.
There's no messing with cards or paper and signing. The back and forth etc.
That goes like triple for bars where you just hand over money vs, asking to open or close and putting it in the computer etc.
Quality because they are so good they don't need to do worry about alternative forms of payment.
Affordability because the price is the price, no fees and they are making so much money they aren't worried about maximizing tickets and table time metrics and all that.
It's definitely not going to be a corporate establishment. The owner is probably in the business and they want it to be good because that's where they eat.
This one won’t, because guess what ATMs have? A screen. Somewhere on this page is the “owner” commenting that they’d take cards, but all of the terminals have…a screen.
Note that they aren't suggesting that people set cars on fire or anything like that, just that people who aren't physically addicted to cars might feel more are home than others.
Welcome to Germany ...
I can see wanting to rant about cars, they are pretty bad in terms of polluting and killing people (which are objectively pretty bad characteristics, whether or not we’ve looked at the trade offs and decided to get one anyway).
Is that file card a thing that the customers carry with them?
Because: Other businesses could begin accepting those same file cards, and the idea will become even more popular and successful and then… oh…
That said, I'm pretty sure this is just an exercise in imagining a very retro sort of establishment. I have a lot of trouble imagining a place like this working.
You could design one without, which would be interesting, but good luck integrating with the major cc companies.
You could maybe bypass them with a third party API, I'd have to do my research to see what the gotchas might be though.
So you read out the tracks and get the data.
You would need to input the amount. Keypad and 7 segment display should work there. While smart watches aren't ok, I suspect that the some electrical cash register is acceptable... and then...
Wait a moment, if they've got an electric cash register they've got the ability to have a MSR.
Anyways, let's assume that the 7 segment display for input of the amount is acceptable. If not... Nixie tubes?
Once the amount to charge is entered, and the card is swiped through the MSR, a receipt printer with the result is used (though they might have issues about that since thermal paper receipts often have BPA https://www.pca.state.mn.us/business-with-us/bpa-and-bps-in-... )
Anyways, result of the transaction through whatever payment processor happens and is sent back to the pi (no screen) that then prints out the result.
Sending credit card number to a payment processor from a MSR is no more difficult than sending it to the same processor from hand entered (for example, online). You might have a higher fee rate, but it's not difficult.