Dublin coffee shop may be first in Ireland to go cashless

The new cashless system will help eliminate stress at the till, the cafe owners state

A barista makes a coffee (Unsplash/Tyler Nix)

A coffee shop in Dublin may be the first in Ireland to have gone cashless, where customers cannot pay with cash.

Bear Market Coffee, situated on George Street in Dublin, is completely cash-free and owned by Ruth and Stephen Deasy.

Mrs Deasy says that going cash-free allows the coffee shop to provide better customer service, while also ensuring baristas don't experience unnecessary stress on the job.

"We do get times where everyone comes in together, with 20 or 30 people in the queue," she says.

"We've found that the person on the till is quite stressed trying to sort out change, so they're not really engaging or explaining different cakes that we have because they're under pressure to get down the line."

Mrs Deasy explains that encouraging customers to pay for their purchases via contactless payments means that "everything can be done really efficiently".

The co-owners had the idea to make the coffee shop cash-free after visiting a cashless store in New York, which they found was "a lot more relaxed".

The coffee chain was first launched by Mr and Mrs Deasy in 2013, who met as architecture students at Dublin School of Architecture.

After doing some investigating, Mr and Mrs Deasy discovered that 80 per cent of the purchases at Bear Market Coffee were already being made on card.

The branch of Bear Market Coffee on George Street is the coffee chain's recently opened flagship store.

Other branches are located on Main Street Blackrock, on George's Dock and on Pembroke Street Lower in Dublin.

In addition to going cashless, Bear Market Coffee on George Street has also partnered with telecommunications company Magnet Networks to allow customers to pre-order their purchases via an app.

In September 2018, the landlord of a traditional pub in Freston, near Ipswich, claimed it was the first in the UK to stop taking cash payments.

The Boot implemented a cashless system in which customers could only for their purchases by card or through their phones.