When chef Jordan Andino, 27, was planning to open his first restaurant, 2nd City in the West Village, he made an unconventional business decision: He decided he would not accept cash.
“I wanted the process streamlined. Having people [only] pay by card lets me manage my entire restaurant on my phone or iPad,” Andino tells The Post.
The chef/restaurateur, who opened his casual counter eatery serving $9 Filipino tacos in May, ads that his no-cash policy reduces the threat of theft.
“Safety is a big concern,” he says. “If someone came in and said, ‘Give me everything you have,’ all they’d be able to take is my insured iPad.”
Some city restaurants have long been cash-only to save on card transaction fees, which are approximately 1.5 to 2 percent, and, more ignominiously, to fudge earnings with the tax man. But a wave of trendy new restaurants at various price points are flipping the accounting books and not accepting greenbacks. Cash is no longer king.
Starting Wednesday, Sweetgreen, the cultishly popular salad chain with 14 locations in New York City, will stop accepting cash for its $12 salad bowls at 60 of its 64 outlets around the country. (The Massachusetts locations still accept cash because it’s illegal not to in the state. New York has no such law.)
While a Sweetgreen rep declined to comment for this article, customers are speaking out.
“You’ve finally crossed a line. not accepting cash? poor people, kids, and immigrants not your target demographic?” tweeted customer Audrey Rabenberg (@WineNotAuds).
Meanwhile, another fast-casual chain, Eatsa, which just opened its first New York location in December, hasn’t taken dollars and cents from the start. Co-founder Scott Drummond says not doing so allows them to prepare their $8 quinoa bowls in just minutes.
“Cash is one of those little contributors that add up to a whole series of little things that could slow down an order,” says Drummond.
It’s not just casual lunch spots where credit rules.
Fish Cheeks, a buzzy new Thai spot in Noho, opened in September with a no-cash policy. One of the restaurant’s partners, Jenn Saesue, says taking cash isn’t worth the trouble and not doing so has allowed her to have a smaller staff.
“It’s definitely reduced the time spent closing up every day because usually if you have cash, you have to spend up to 45 minutes just to reconcile everything,” she says. “With credit cards, you literally just print the closing report.”
Plus, she says, nearly all of her millennial customers would prefer to use plastic to pay for their $22 coconut crab curry and $22 seafood lemongrass soup.
“I don’t remember the last time I had more than $100 cash in my wallet, and I don’t think that our target audience would carry a lot of cash,” she says.
According to a 2014 survey by consumer financial services company Bankrate, she’s right. The research found that nearly eight in 10 Americans carry less than $50 in cash. And a 2016 study by the data Web site MarketingCharts found that young people ages 18 to 34 are 13 percent less likely to pay with cash than older generations.
But some New Yorkers say paying with hard dollars when they eat out is essential to their money management.
“Having cash is a budgetary measure,” says Tom LaVecchia, a 41-year-old marketing executive on the Upper East Side. “Sometimes with using a credit card, it doesn’t feel like money.”
He regrets a meal out last summer where he treated some friends and ended up charging more than $1,000. Never again.
“If a restaurant discloses to me beforehand that they don’t accept cash, I wouldn’t go since I’d find it so off-putting,” says LaVecchia.
That means in addition to Sweetgreen, Eatsa and Fish Cheeks, LaVecchia should avoid Sadelle’s and Mr. Donahue’s, two acclaimed newer restaurants that also don’t accept cash but declined to comment for this story.
Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard economics professor and the author of the recent book “The Curse of Cash” (Princeton University Press; out now), says that even though paper money is on the decline, consumers should still have the option to pay with currency.
“Ordinary people will still want to use cash sometimes for maintaining privacy for very small transactions,” Rogoff says.
And money gurus such as Lynnette Khalfani-Cox say paying with plastic when eating out encourages financial irresponsibility.
“If you’re not seeing money leave your hands, it doesn’t feel as real for a lot of people,” says Khalfani-Cox, the co-founder of AskTheMoneyCoach.com. “I’d bet good money that these restaurant owners know that the average person will spend a lot more money when using any kind of plastic.”
A study in 2001 at MIT found that people spend twice as much when they’re using a credit card instead of cash for any purchase.
Andino of 2nd City readily admits that his plastic-only policy encourages big spending.
“It definitely helps my staff sell more items to customers,” he says. “They’re not worrying about [a handling] change. They just have to swipe the customer’s card and press a button, and that makes it more of a show — customers are more engaged and feel more comfortable spending.”
Like it or not, industry experts say the future is plastic.
“I would expect to see this happen in a lot of different arenas,” says David Just, an economics professor at Cornell Institute for Food Systems. “For full-service restaurants, it’s almost a no-brainer to go cashless.”
