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Warning: The farmers market in my town went card-only last month and I watched a 70 year old vendor lose half her sales
I stopped by the Saturday market in my town two weeks ago and noticed almost nobody at the honey stand. The woman running it told me the market switched to a card-only token system at the entrance, so you have to buy wooden coins with a card before you can shop. She does not take cards herself and a lot of older folks who used to pay her in cash just walked past instead of figuring out the token machine. She guessed she lost about $200 that morning alone. Has anyone seen a market do cash and card side by side without forcing everyone into the token thing? I want to bring it up at the next town meeting but I need examples that actually work.
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nguyen.angela1mo ago
Kept watching this happen at a co-op in my area that tried the same thing, and the fix they landed on was dumb simple: the token booth started taking cash too. That one change brought back most of the older crowd because they never had a problem with tokens, they had a problem with the card machine at the entrance. The other thing nobody mentions is that token systems eat a cut in card fees, so the market was paying to make less money, which is a terrible trade. If you want ammo for the town meeting, ask the board for the fee statements from the token vendor, because I bet the numbers make the case better than any speech will. Cash and card can run side by side at the booth, vendors keep taking whatever they always took, and nobody has to learn a machine to buy honey.
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