How Can Restaurant Balance Credit Card Fees While Keeping Cashless Customers Happy

Dining is rapidly becoming a cashless experience. Last year, 81 percent of the money spent at full-service restaurants in America was charged to debit, credit or pre-paid cards, up from 72 percent in 2006 and 66 percent in 2004. At quick-service restaurants, many of which only started taking cards in the early 2000s, just 37 percent of sales were charged in 2012, but the trend toward plastic is the same. At the same time, customers’ insistence that restaurants take cards has allowed companies like Visa, MasterCard and American Express to charge ever-higher merchant fees, leading some restaurant owners to question the value of plastic. These fees often range from 2 percent to 3.5 percent of the bill — a significant chunk to a restaurateur running a business with a profit margin in the mid-single digits

OpenTable Offers to Build Free Mobile Websites For Restaurants

Have you ever gone deaf from the light jazz auto-plays or gone blind from the flash animation from a restaurant’s website? Let’s face it; most restaurant websites suck. From Mashable: 

OpenTable wants to give each of its thousands of restaurant partners their own mobile-friendly website — on the house.

The popular online reservation platform launched a free service on Tuesday in partnership with DudaMobile, a DIY mobile website builder, to help restaurants foot the cost of creating websites tailored for smartphones and tablets. The offer is geared towards small and medium-sized establishments who may not have the resources or the know-how to build their own mobile websites.