It's going to be a cashless future, and a prominent San Antonio restaurant chain is ready to lead the way, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Jim Guy Egbert, the President and CEO of the Bill Miller Barbecue chain, says he has made the decision to take his company 'cashless.' He says Bill Miller would be among the first chain restaurants in the country to make the move.
Egbert, who took over for long time Bill Miller CEO Balous Miller in January, says it makes sense for his company because cash is a drag on restaurant operations.
He says not only does the presence of cash in the restaurants invite crime, loss, and pilferage, but it is a time consuming pain in the neck for his managers, who should be doing more important things, like serving customers.
"Three or four times a day, our employees and our managers having to handle petty cash, counting the registered, cleaning the tills," he said. "About ten percent of our managers' time is spent handling cash."
Then he says the bulky cash has to be stored and transported to the bank, all of which has the potential to cause problems. As Egbert was being interviewed for this story he got word that one of his managers had been robbed.
Egbert says a startling 65% of his business is already cashless, as customers pay with debit or credit cards.
He says his goal now is to expand that to include any number of available payment apps, and he is working on the creation of a Bill Miller app that customers could use to pay through their smart devices, without having to utilize any cash or plastic.
"If we could be one of the first restaurants to maintain our speed of service, and while we are getting rid of the cash lower the time at the register, the speed of service will improve as well," he said.
Egbert says while some restaurant companies with a single or just a handful of outlets have already gone to cashless payment, for a chain like Bill Miller, which has 76 outlets in multiple cities, it would be a major accomplishment. He says he has set no date for the last Poor Boy to be paid for with cash money, he says that will be dependent on both the available technology, and the willingness of his customers to make the switch.
"If we were to go out tomorrow and say we are only going to accept one of these other forms of payment instead of cash, I think we would be thrown out to the curb by all our customers."