The impact of demonetisation on eateries in the city has come out with the owners complaining of poor patronage since November 8, when the currency restrictions were announced.
Many of the restaurants are reportedly incurring losses owing to ‘change’ issues while those having point of sale (swiping) machines are able to manage transactions smoothly.
“We accepted the old high denomination (OHD) bank notes for the first two days as we didn’t have any issue in exchanging them legally. Then we ran out of 100s and were forced to accept the OHDs. Now, more than 60 per cent of the payments are made through POS machines while the rest are made in cash. We are also accepting Paytm money besides giving vouchers to our customers instead of change. Customers can visit us any time later and redeem the voucher,” V. Varun, managing partner of Monk’s Kitchen told The Hindu .
Though the owners are able to manage things with their customers, deals with their suppliers have become a cause of concern.
“We are not able to pay our suppliers who provide commodities for the daily needs of the kitchen as they are not accepting OHDs. For a couple of days we got the items on credit,” said L. Ramakanth, owner of an eatery at Siddhartha Nagar.
POS machines
Meanwhile, the demand for point of sale (POS) machines that accept debit and credit card payments has risen and the providers are unable to deliver them.
“We make business worth lakhs of rupees each day and accept only cash. None of our food products cost more than Rs. 100 and the average purchase value is also the same. POS providers denied supply citing lack of availability and we were asked to wait for at least a month,” said a tiffin centre manager on condition of anonymity.
