Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home to the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and MLS's Atlanta United, became the first pro sports stadium to go cashless earlier this month. The stadium said its decision will help it cut down wait times and give it flexibility to lower prices more often. It set up 10 kiosks around the stadium where fans can convert their cash into pre-paid debit cards to buy food and other merchandise.

Cashless gives you flexibility to lower prices more often?
Bought Kiosk=cost to still accept cash and inconvenience a customer by forcing them to convert cash at one place to then go to another line to buy the hotdog. Brilliant.

and McDonald’s investing 300 million to change menus based on weather. Save the money. Hire better help and make better food and you might make another 300 million.

The world’s biggest restaurant chain is spending more than $300 million on Dynamic Yield Ltd., according to a person familiar with the matter. With the new technology, McDonald’s restaurants can vary their electronic menu boards’ display of items, depending on factors such as the weather -- more coffee on cold days and McFlurries on hot days, for example -- and the time of day or regional preferences. The menus will also suggest add-on items to customers.

I'll address the McDonald's one....

There's always those customers that just stand there and stare up at the menu, it's a deer in the headlights scenario. Too much to process to make a decision. My god man, beef like substance or what might have been a chicken, just pick?

Now if we could read their minds, and only show them the right couple of items we can direct their purchases, show the right addons, and make more money.

We all do that analytics now in our business, cause we're trained and knowledgeable, we ask the right questions to arrive at the best solution. If we could get at the data in a straight forward manner, without the dance of "he's just trying to sell us stuff we don't need", and how much they're going to spend, we'd make more money too.

Most people have a credit or debit card. The few who only have cash will be out of the food/beer/merchandise line off to the side somewhere getting their re-loadable card while everyone else moves through the line quicker. Employees cant steal cash or count change wrong...counterfeiters can go kick rocks.

I only carry cash when i go somewhere that i might tip. Lately though i have just been putting that on the card too. Everything i buy has a digital-paper-trail and consumer protection.

The whole cashless craze is going to backfire, the peoples aren't ready for that level of NWO Mark of the Beast takeover, yet.

Benz stadium's reasons for going cashless are retarded, sounds like more of a clusterfcuk than a convenience. Why don't they tell their real reasons? Or maybe their reasons aren't very PC...

Already several cities trying to make cashless retail illegal. [Link: nytimes.com]

Oh lord, I knew this thread was going to spark the tin foil hat club.

As for McDonalds, don’t question them. I heard one chef say that even in high end restaurants he tries to copy what McDonald’s does. They do tons of research and run the numbers before doing anything to decide if it will make more money. This sounds genius.

People are ready and have gone cashless in other countries.

Benz stadium reasons are fine the implementation is stupid.

There may be a case that not offering a cash option for payment is illegal.

This will only work well when the company that provides this service has a product better than the Sirius Cybernetics Company's elevators. Those elevators had a built-in feature whereby they could read minds and see slightly into the future, so when a person got on the elevator, the elevator would read their minds and deliver them to the floor they were thinking about. None of this messy mucking about with fingertips and numbered buttons.

The McDonalds provider would have to read one whole weather cycle in advance in order to get the right mix of product into the "restaurant" during the night before the product is needed.




(Yes, Sirius Cybernetics was an invention of Douglas Adams, and was an important part of the general atmosphere of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy almost forty years ago.)

A lot of places forbid their employees to count the change and if someone hands over an amount that would mean they get a dollar bill as change, the person is supposed to return the extra coins and let the register determine the change.

That would be fine, if the kids at the register could freaking count. I bought a sub sandwich and handed over a $20 bill. I was supposed to get $14.41 in change, but the girl clearly had a lot of inner turmoil going on because she picked out a couple of coins, looked at her hand, then the drawer, then the screen, back to the drawer and repeated this several times before looking at her co-worker and it took another couple of minutes for her to open the window to hand me the WRONG amount. She had given me 16 cents. I don't know what they teach in schools here, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the real world.

Maybe the registers need to show them how to make change with Common Core Math.

Great responses

McD's: Deer in headlights, multiple languages, fewer employee interactions, speed increase (more units sold per hour)...

The stadium: They make money on the cash/prepaid machines just like coinstar. You give a $20 bill and get $18 loaded on the card. Plus less cash handling (short drawers, mis-counts) plus security needs for all the cash....

China has gone not only cash free, but card free. Almost all transactions are done via phone app. Europe is mostly cash free, and big companies are multinational and need to bring everything in line..

Clerks can't count. Last cash purchase was for like $4.40. Handed a $20. She rang it up as a $10, she realized her mistake, got confused, called over her manager (yeah, I was watching along for sport at this point), told her what she had done, and wasn't sure how to proceed (the sane people thinking, just grab what the register told her and a $10, easy right), nope, manager prints the receipt, grabs a calculator out of the cabinet (barely holding in the laughter by now), punches it all in, and then explains to the cashier how to count it out from the drawer. Priceless.

This is exceedingly stupid (but within the range of normal for retail) and I haven't seen this yet. Could you name a few of these places?

When I'm actually at the point of conversation with a cashier, I'll sometimes tell them there's a way to make sure their clients don't drop the coins. See, if you WANTED people to drop coins, you'd put the paper in their hands, then put the coins on top. Coins slide nicely along paper, so it's easy to drop coins this way. And that's how newfangled*cash registers encourage you to give the change. $14.41 is obviously a ten dollar bill, a four dollar bill (or two twos), a quarter, a dime, a nickel, and a penny... resulting the paper going into your hand first.

Why wasn't this always a problem? Because registers did not always tell how much change to return. When you tried to pay $5.59 for that sub sandwich, the cashier would COUNT OUT sixty, seventy, seventy-five, six dollars; seven, eight, nine, ten, twenty dollars. The coins don't slide over the bills onto the floor. (Actually there's been a chronic shortage of ten dollar bills in the Los Angeles area for several years.)

In an effort to minimize the change that ends up in my pocket, I'll give partial payment in coins. For example, if the total is $xx.27. I'll give the two pennies, expecting three quarters in the change. Some cash registers will deal with this, some won't. Some clerks can deal with this, some will pause, others are totally flummoxed. Some will look from hand to hand, hand to register, back at me, several times, then decide that I'm totally out of it, make some sort of comment about twenty seven cents, ultimately giving back the two pennies.

I don’t think cards move anyone through quicker. Look at Homedepot for example. To many steps, plus how would you like to receive a receipt? Menus. Sometimes you need to just look for a minute to see what strikes you that day. Typically because you are not the one that suggested the place. McDonalds can use what ever gimmick they choose. They won’t sell much more or become busier because of gimmicks. Lines are not long anyways. If they want to be busier, then change the food and hire quality people like Chick-fil-A.

My favorite thing about McDonalds is the signs that say “Braille and Picture menus available”. And the best is when they have this sign on the drive thru window.