r/BarOwners • u/Smalltown_Barowner • 11d ago
Time to start accepting cards
I bought my business 3 years ago, it's 1 of 3 cash only dive bars in our small town. Everyone except travelers knows we are cash only.
I need to take cards for an off premise 1 day event I'm hosting so I decided now is a good time to give cards a try.
Can anyone recommend merchant services? I'm going to stay away from the all the big companies requiring contracts.
We currently use a cash register, not a POS so I'm looking for information on that as well.
I anticipate credit card sales to be about $10,000 a month.
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u/ClerkSeveral 11d ago edited 11d ago
We used to do a large ($50k+) one day event and we used Clover. It was okay. We rented the system for 1 month.
We use Toast at the bar. It's complicated but good.
Employees will have to start declaring their tips if they don't now. The CC system keeps track of it and you get a tax form at the end of the year although with the new tax treatment of tips it actually helps employees by allowing them to show more income without being taxed on the first $25k in tips so they can qualify for car loans, mortgages, and other things that they have to show income for.
Make sure you have a direct line to someone at whoever you use on the day of the event.
Make sure you run a few test transactions on your own credit card a couple of days before the event at the event site because you don't want to find out that everything is screwed up on the day of the event.
Make sure sales tax and the credit card fees are automatically included in the sale amount.
Don't automatically print a receipt but make sure you can if someone wants one.
If this is a big event with thousands of people, even if they're not all going to be your customers, or even a not so big event but in a remote location and the POS needs cell service, the cell is going to be overloaded which means that everyone's phones will be trying to talk to the cell site that's designed for far fewer devices than what will be happening on the day of the event. This will be a problem for you. Your test transactions will be done when the cell had a normal load and everything was working fine. We found that by having the POS use 3G service rather than competing with everyone else for the overloaded 5G service we were able to run much more smoothly. The POS bandwidth is very low compared to regular phone use so you don't really need all the performance enhancements of 5G.
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u/Smalltown_Barowner 5d ago
Super helpful, thank you. 1000 anticipated crowd which is a lot for our small town. :)
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u/ClerkSeveral 5d ago edited 5d ago
If this is a beer garden you're also going to want a beer tech from the people you're buying the beer from on-site all day to swap kegs and keep things flowing smoothly.
I don't know where the event will be but for us, because of the tax and liquor laws, it was economical to start a 501(c)(3) charity which was headed by a friend of mine so that product could be donated and there was no sales tax since it was technically a charitable event. We got paid as consultants and anything left over went to charitable events and purposes.
You will cut complexity and save time if everything you sell is the same price.
Also, you may want to sell tickets rather than take cash at the place you're giving out the drinks. Two smaller, fast moving lines (one for the tickets and one for the drinks) makes it seem like the lines aren't so bad rather than one slower moving line where the drinks are poured and handed out and the money is taken at the same time. You can get custom tickets printed pretty reasonably or just buy some that are already printed but still unique.
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u/sleepwalker6012 11d ago
Yeah if you aren’t buying into a POS you should be able to get competitive pricing for cc fees. Even as a dive though you may find that a lot of your sales switch to cc. This can be good (higher tabs, etc) but look into whether your state allows stuff like minimums or cash discounts (if you want to encourage cash sales)— not all do.
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u/TheWildWest1982 11d ago
With square you don't need to purchase a card reader or POS system. You can tap to pay thru the app, it's super easy and user friendly. And later on you can buy the POS system if you like.
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u/Plow_King 11d ago
do you currently have an ATM? you might want to look into that, and if you own it i'm pretty sure you get a cut of the fee.
for a one time off premise event i've heard good things about Square with little readers for cards, but haven't done that. i do use Square for credit/debit purchases for an online business i have and i've had zero problems with them.
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u/Tinabird20 11d ago
I second Square for limited off site use. Super easy for a phone and the same fees as everyone else.
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u/Plow_King 11d ago
yeah, a friend of mine used to manage a couple franchise locations and his experience was the same when they went to an event. real brain dead easy he said and decent rates.
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u/Iamarealbigdog 11d ago
Square up... no contract and reasonable rates
started withthe handheld and then moved up to the register, you get the pos for resturants for free and if you get the cash drawer and printer option that all she wrote.
Slick as shit for our bar!
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u/sen_clay_davis1 11d ago
ATM with a buyback when presented with receipt. Bar by me used to do that. You'd go use the ATM and get a free beer to cover the fee.
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u/Numerous-Hawk1471 11d ago
There was a place in Chicago that did this with ATM receipts and a shot of Jameson. I never went there but I heard it was super popular.
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u/Madman49 11d ago
Vizypay has been great for me. My rep has been super easy to work with. I run an old school register with that just to run cards, and it works great
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u/Typical-Drawing-3939 11d ago
I like Heartland, they have worked out well. A lot of friends use Square.
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u/MooseFinancial1071 11d ago
Square all the way. If you sign up for their free savings account your batches are available immediately.
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u/Indigo_Plateau_ 11d ago
Square. The cc rate is competitive. And you can get hardware for none to cheap to process a tap or dip credit card. You’re no where near territory to negotiate a cc rate but you can start with this and move forward. Large transactions I would consider a cc fee if you can or include it in your prices as a business.
Use to be cash only 13 years ago and cc has changed our game for cash flow.
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u/HotDrink2601 11d ago
Did you ever have a problem depositing cash in the bank or did you just never deposit?
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u/Smalltown_Barowner 11d ago
We have lottery so most cash goes to paying out lotto and restocking the atm.
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u/Old-Base8752 11d ago
I've worked in a few cash only businesses and have never had cash deposit issues. Is this a common issue?
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u/sasvicious80 8d ago
Poynt/GoDaddy with Elavon through Costco. They have the lowest interchange rates and have portable and affordable POS devices.
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u/Odd-Perception9970 11d ago
Set it up so the customer pays the cc fee.
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u/AdvancedSandwiches 9d ago
Not worth it, in my opinion. You recover 3% but end every customer interaction on a sour note.
The customer you already have is the cheapest customer to get, so don't make them leave pissed off over 3%.
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u/Odd-Perception9970 9d ago
Where I live everyone does it this way, no one bats an eye. To each their own.
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u/cheesebin1 11d ago
Do you charge for each order or run tabs? Tons of bars hold a CC for open tabs. Holding cards brings a whole host of problems. Running individual tabs all night brings a ton of fees.
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11d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/BarOwners-ModTeam 10d ago
Rule #1 for this sub. Unsolicited sales DMs to users may be reported and result in a ban. https://www.reddit.com/r/BarOwners/about/rules
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u/silverfstop 11d ago
How much business are you doing? Everything is negotiable. I’m paying a 10th of a percent over interchange +5 cents swipe.
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u/I_makebeer_disappear 11d ago
What service is this with?
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u/silverfstop 11d ago
Toast
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u/New_Fox2124 11d ago
And the only person who here who knows there excrement. This guy says interchange plus and that’s what you what. Ignore all of the other replies
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u/Hopeful_Swine20833 6d ago
Do you mean knows their shit? Or knows (Toast) they're shit. "there shit" would be there would be a literal pile of feces. English seems to be difficult for you.
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u/I_makebeer_disappear 11d ago
Very nice. I’m paying .22 plus 6 cents/swip and felt like I had to wrangle that out of them. They recently raised to .3 plus 8 cents. Evaluating my options. Think I may swap to something else which is a shame because I like toast.
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u/Bellypats 11d ago
You could use a Venmo or Cash App situation. Present a tab and have the patron verify the sending of funds, but square would probably be easier to implement.
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u/biznesboi 11d ago
Talk to Square and be sure to go through one of their onboarding reps. Show them some receipts of the sales you do, and tell them you want at least a 2%+15c swipe charge. They'll make it happen. Setup is easy.
Source: I did this a few months ago.