Growing number of NYC restaurants going cashless

NEW YORK (FOX5NY) - Customers at a Midtown Manhattan restaurant were a little shocked the first time they found out they were no longer allowed to use cash to pay.  The owners decided to go cashless in the name of speed.

Two Forks Restaurant is near Bryant Park and does a busy lunch service.

Co-owner Michael Caplan says he got the idea about going cashless when running the register.  That was eight months ago.

Caplan says he, "saw bottlenecking and said 'it's not working'.  I was getting confused making change.  We were running out of change."

They say, so far, it's working out very well to ban cash.

"I say we probably increase amount of people we can get through probably by ten percent or so during the busy lunch rush,” Caplan says.

You might wonder what happens when the credit card machines go down.

"All credit cards are basically kept in cloud, so to speak, so when machine comes back online they all process at that point," Caplan says.

Since there are no cash registers, the staff does try to pool money for change for the new customers who are unaware of the rules.

There are other restaurants in Manhattan that have also gone cashless.  Among them are Dig Inn, Dos Toros and Sweetgreen.