• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Custom Events
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • Send us a Tip
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • About
The Spoon
  • Home
  • Podcasts
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Advertise
  • About

Report: Being Cashless Backfires When Payment System Crashes

by Chris Albrecht
October 19, 2018October 22, 2018Filed under:
  • Delivery & Commerce
  • Restaurant Tech
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Customers at the sweetgreen in Hollywood (Sunset and Gower location) reportedly got a nice surprise during lunch time yesterday — a free meal. A social media post yesterday from a customer who was there that said the restaurant’s payment system went down, and since sweetgreen is a cashless establishment, the store wound up giving away lunches to all the people standing in line waiting to order.

We don’t have many details except the one eyewitness (who asked to remain anonymous when we followed up with them) report who said that the Hollywood sweetgreen found itself with a “completely crashed system” during the lunch rush. The restaurant had no way to accept cash and instead of closing, they decided to give away food for free.

If it happened as told, this is probably an isolated incident (we reached out to sweetgreen, see below). But the situation highlights the perils restaurants can experience when going cashless, especially if they don’t have contingency plans in place.

The sweetgreen salad chain went cashless in January of 2017. From that point on, in order to pay for your food you had to either order through the app or use a credit card in-store. As my colleague Jenn Marston wrote last year, going cashless has its pluses and minuses.

The good thing about going cashless is improved safety for workers (nothing to rob), faster service, and improved accuracy. All good things! The downside, however, is that it’s expensive to implement, local governments may make it illegal, and it shuts out the poor and young as customers. All bad things!

Going cashless has also had its ups and downs as a businesses decision, for those who tried it. Shake Shack abandoned its self-service, cashless store in New York. And while Eatsa retreated on its plan to roll out its own automated, cashless restaurants, Wow Bao was so taken with Eatsa’s technology and after an initial test decided to open a second cashless location.

We reached out to sweetgreen asking about the incident and to see what type of back up plans the company has in place if and when outages like these happen. A PR rep for the company wrote us back neither confirming nor denying the outage, simply saying that they were going to pass on the opportunity to answer any of our questions.


Related

Sweetgreen Dumps Cashless Payments System Amid Controversy

Sweetgreen is the latest business to reverse its cashless business policy as controversy over the model grows. Yesterday, the fast-casual chain announced it would accept cash at all six of its Philadelphia locations starting July 1, and at all 94 Sweetgreen locations by the end of 2019. One of the…

Why Philadelphia’s Ban on Cashless Business Is a Good Thing

Philadelphia, PA yesterday became the first major U.S. city to ban cashless stores, The Wall Street Journal reports. A new law will “require most retail stores to accept cash” and goes into effect in July 2019. The law would not include parking garages, stores like Costco (which require membership) or…

Domino’s Is Testing Cashless Payments in Australia as Debate Over the Model Rages On

While the battle over cashless payments is still heating up in the U.S., with companies like Sweetgreen and Amazon backpedaling from the model, other parts of the world tell a different story. Case in point: mega pizza chain Domino’s is testing cashless payments in Australia with a new program called…

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • Automation
  • cashless
  • kiosk
  • restaurant
  • sweetgreen

Post navigation

Previous Post The Food Nest Pivots from Being an Accelerator into Commercial Kitchen Services
Next Post Food Tech News: Wine Delivery, Ugly Produce, and Probiotic Ice Cream

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

The Spoon Podcast Network!

Feed your mind! Subscribe to one of our podcasts!

From AI as Health Advisor to Leaving Shark Tank, Here Are 5 Takeaways From My Conversation With Mark Cuban
NotCo’s Next AI-Powered Innovation? Replicating Human Scent to Make My Dog Happy
Is Posha the Robotic Heir to the Thermomix? The Founders Sure Hope So
From Aspiring Pro Surfer to Delivery Robot CEO with Coco’s Zach Rash
Mark Cuban to Speak at SKS 2025

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2025 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.