VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hey everybody, Justin from B2B Vault: The Payment Technology Podcast with your host, Allen Kopelman, and we’ll be providing educational information about business payments, FinTech, or financial technology, decentralized finance, and the technology businesses need in today’s world and today’s episodes we’re going to talk about a recent article that we were reading about, uh, service fees, credit cards at restaurants.
Right, it’s kind of interesting. There was this article in the New York Post, and it got posted. I saw it published in a few Facebook groups and everything. I started to read the article, and I was like, Okay.
This person is upset that they went to brunch or lunch at this restaurant. And she gave her name, you know, it’s an article in the New York Post, so it’s public information. And she said when the bill came, she had to make a mad dash to run to the local ATM. She looked on her phone to find an ATM because she didn’t want to pay the 3% fee on top of the credit card bill. So, I said, well, I wonder what she ate. So I looked at the, I looked at the bill, you know, and I see that she ordered what you ordered, right. And, you know, we’ll post the link to the article in the show notes, but she ordered two burgers.
It says big burger, two of them, $47 each. Now I know Rocky likes burgers. Right? Rocky. Do you like burgers? Come here. I know you like burgers almost as much. You want chicken jerky. Rocky likes chicken jerky too, but would you be more upset about the 3% now? The total bill was $180. So I did the math, and 3% was about $5 and 52 cents.
I mean $5 and 52 cents. That’s nothing; you’re going to run to the ATM. The ATM will charge you, um, you know, a dollar 50 to $3 fee. Right. If it’s your bank, then it’s free. If it’s not your bank, you will pay another $1.50 to $3. He spent almost the same thing. Plus, you got to run out of the restaurant and find an ATM.
That’s kind of crazy. I would be more pissed that the burger is $47. I don’t know if I’m mean. We wouldn’t have to be organic grass-fed. With what? Some special bun with shaved truffles on it, or I mean, I’m a vegetarian, so I would never pay $47. I looked up the menu for the place. It didn’t say anything special about the hamburger on the menu. It wasn’t made with some beef Wagyu, or what’s the other one?
Besides the Wagyu beef, the expensive Kobe, Kobe beef. Yeah. It was not like made with that with like Koby beef. I mean, you know, $47 burger. And then, on top of that, they got a side order of cheese for 25 bucks. So it was like it was more than twenty-five bucks. The side order of chicken was like mine; pull it back up the side order, a chicken was $49 for a side order of chicken.
I mean, I don’t know, man. You can go in public. Right and get, or Costco and get a rotisserie, a whole rotisserie chicken. I think it costs goes around five bucks. Publix is about six or seven bucks. So you get seven. I mean, they spent $184. There was a 20% gratuity. Also, the tip was $28.60 that’s. I mean, that’s pretty.
I hope the hundred percent of that gratuity went to the, went to the employee. I opened it for sure. But what I’m saying is, I don’t even understand, like, I wouldn’t be upset about the 3% charge. I’m more upset about the food prices. I mean, that’s kind of crazy New York. I don’t know. Last night, I bought three chicken dinners from Dutch Pot, a Jamaican restaurant, and it was $42. That’s crazy. There were just two chicken pieces, a thigh and a leg. That’s it. That’s a quarter of a chicken. That’s ridiculous—one scoop of rice. I mean, people are sending here $2. The price of food is out of control. Totally. Okay. The cost of gas is out of control.
Here’s this girl complaining about $5 and 52 cents, but she spent $49 on two burgers and a piece of chicken. She looks young and probably makes a six-figure income, maybe, possibly. But you know, if you’re, if you’re worried about saving a few bucks, you would think that perhaps going to the local burger joint down the street.
Yeah, that might save you. I would say about 160 bucks. If you would have gone to, you know, the guy around the corner, five guys, I guarantee you there’s a restaurant or a bodega where you could have got a New York chop cheese and a chicken sandwich for about $25. Yeah, it’s crazy. They didn’t, and that’s including the entertainment.
The random cat at every bodega in New York to laugh at and like, you’re building up a business, you know, I don’t know. Oh, it’s crazy. But we’re talking about the big distraction on TV that is as a Johnny Depp pirate right now. Oh, my advocacy for a friend of mine called me last night about it, like, Hey, you want to let’s, let’s talk.
Can we take a deep dive into this Donny Johnny Depp thing? And I was like, the only deep dive you’re going to be taking this by yourself because I have no idea what is going on. I haven’t, and I didn’t even know that, honestly. I didn’t know. I didn’t care enough to know, Hey, Johnny Depp was getting divorced or that he had already been through all this legal trouble.
So yeah, it’s all over this court TV all day. It’s all over on the news. We have gas through the roof. Ukraine is getting blown to bits. I’m just upset that this is why Johnny Depp didn’t finish pirates of the Caribbean. That’s real easy. This woman accused QSU, and she accused him. And now there’s a whole lawsuit, $50 million.
She violated a nondisclosure on there and their divorce or something. I mean, who does? I don’t even care. No. And I told somebody, I said, all that is, is to spoil the rich. Um, auntie is spending everybody’s whatever wasting the court’s time. Right. I’ll probably get thrown out of court at the end, you know, who knows, but Johnny Depp receives some. I don’t know, fulfillment or whatever he is looking for. When he’s talking sounds weird about Johnny Depp, it seems he’s from South Florida too, which is, you know, so I don’t know why, but it’s a, you know, but, but you know, back to this, you know, I think, you know, restaurants are suffering right now.
Many businesses suffer, so we know they’re going to the cash discount or surcharge model. They have a printed sign up, and they’re passing the 2%, 3%, 4%, whatever it is in that article that says, there’s a guy down the street, excuse me, wherever in New York where they’re given 10% discount.
If you pay with cash, that’s kind of a lap instead of a fish market in there it’s w or something like that, she said, and, uh, their overall profit is obviously. Being affected, but they’re trying to, it’s hard for everyone. She said. Yeah, well, you know, the economy is crazy today. And the news there was that the, um, index fell like 15%.
So you know that this, you know, the sales, you know, sales, so sales fell 15% in. What does that 30 days or less than 30 days, more than 30, over the last 30 days that they counted? So that started, you know, they get that data now. Right. But that, that data is, you know, a month older already. So, you know, you can’t imagine like, you know if you’re spending 60, $70 to fill up your car and it used to cost $30 to fill up your car, you know, that’s disposable income that you don’t have anymore that you, that people were spending on going out to eat now.
I told Justin that I had gone to a restaurant in my neighborhood. And I was shocked when I got the bill. I didn’t look at the menu cause I know what I like to eat there. So I was like, oh, I was with my son. Oh, let’s get an order of this or that blah, blah, blah. And we get it. Then when we left, I was like, wow, the price went through the roof. Everywhere. And there were hardly any diners in the place too, because people can’t not, everybody can afford to be going out to eat all the time.
Know you go to Costco, Publix, it’s packed the grocery store. Every time I go to the grocery store, it takes me at least an hour. Yeah. It’s packed. Or you can’t find parking. There’s a Publix by my house. Yeah, it has to be. The world’s most minor parking lot for a grocery store. Yeah. I don’t even understand why you would build a grocery store and then put that size parking lot there.
Like trader Joe’s top 10 people would come and shop at the store, Trader Joe’s does that. They always have a smell, you know, in an area where it’s a very, very small parking lot, which is not good. No, but it’s, you know, we’re in this, you know, economy and, you know, I, this article just stood out to me, and they’re complaining about $5 and 52 cents.
Right. And, but you’re going to spend $49 on a burger. I mean, it’s just crazy. I mean, that’s the world’s most expensive hamburger. Yeah. I guess you got to get your priorities in order of where you’re trying to save money. It must have been a slow, quiet news day for the NY Post to write about cheeseburgers and credit card fees.
I mean, come on. I’m sure there’s other stuff to report about as opposed to some woman prelim privileged enough to afford 150, $84 brunch. No, but some people might be asking, you know, how’s that legal for the restaurants to do that. Right. And a lot of restaurants, they did mention that. So many restaurants, you know, during the pandemic, because we have a lot of customers that are hospitality type businesses, restaurants Bars and places like that.
And many restaurants, because they’re like a lack of business, not enough business, started to add on, you know, they began to add the gratuity automatically to the bill. Cause people were not. Yep. You know, and then they started adding the, you know, adding the fee if people didn’t want to pay with cash.
So they added a fee on that, you know, and that’s what they needed to do. No, it’s not new. 2010, there was the Durbin, which got passed right by Congress. And then it was okayed by the federal reserve and all that. And then went into effect the ability for merchants to do surcharging and cash discount, and put us where merchants could say, oh, you are required to spend $10 to use your credit.
So it gave them the right, like the $5 minimum protection that you could do. A 10, $10 is the, is the legal amount. You were then supposed to be 4% on the credit card surcharge or cash discount, whatever you want to call it. And it’s been around forever. Cause gas stations have been doing it. You know, gas stations.
You go to most gas stations and get cash price and credit. I feel like they’ve been doing it before. Right. And they were doing it before, and the government was always allowed to do it for government payments. Schools were allowed to do it for school payments. There was a lot of, um, a lot of exemptions, uh, you know, but, after the 2010 Durbin, you had several cases that went to the Supreme.
So there were several cases. There was one with these guys that owned the camera shop and another one where there was a hair salon. And then one of the biggest ones was that Clarence Thomas did the write-up on it. Right. And it was American express versus the state of Ohio.
You know, there was not a winner-loser in that because the state of Ohio was doing something wrong. They were charging like four or 5% for American express and charging a lower amount if it was a visa or MasterCard. So basically, you have to set the same for all the credit cards. Why would they do something like that?
They just did it. It resulted in a lawsuit with American express when to the Supreme court and basically kind of sounds dumb to you. I don’t know why you would do that, but whatever. Yeah. The Supreme court ruled that the Durbin amendment gave the right for them to do that.
And free speech enables them to, you know, the first amendment says that the merchant wants to do that. They can do it. People have a choice. Listen, yet I tell people all anonymous, and you have a choice when you go on. Whatever you know, you’re going to buy something, right. You’re going to go; you’re going to walk in; you’re going to pay cash credit sooner or later; your business accepts crypto.
Right. And you’re going to have people who will take crypto transactions and two who have already stopped. And the whole thing is, is this is that, you know, you have a choice of how you want to pay. You don’t want to pay the credit card fees. Go to the bank, get a bunch of cash and go around him and pay with cash.
And I can tell you; that many people started going back to cash after the whole thing when the government came in, and they put taxes on Venmo, CashApp, and Zelle. These companies were supposed to be doing person-to-person transfers, but instead, they were doing many business transactions.
So now those companies are sending everybody 10 99 Ks, just like the credit. Have to do for the merchant services. Right? So now many people told me, oh, I have to pay taxes on all this money. Right. Surprise. Welcome to the world of doing business. You know.
Yeah. And you know, and then rates are going up everywhere—Visa, MasterCard, raising their interchange fees. You had a company, these third-party companies, whatever you want to call the platform. Third-party platforms, PayPal, raised their rates. We talked about it in a couple of podcasts already. You know Venmo raised their rates.
They also started to go after people by saying, oh, you’re X amount of transactions a day or a week or a month, you need to open a business account. It’s no longer like it’d be a personal account. So I started making people switch over, and they had a rate, and then they just raised the rate on the Venmo transactions.
And in fact, Venmo is so desperate for business. I keep getting emails. We’ll give you $10 to use Venmo; we’ll give you $10. PayPal also started offering me $10 to pay with PayPal. Well, I think people started going away from that because pay with PayPal because they don’t want to deal with paying, getting a 10 90 nines from PayPal.
So people are going away from those services. Yeah. So that’s, that’s, that’s an issue out there. If anybody has any questions, cause this is live on LinkedIn. We’re live on Facebook, and we’re live on Twitter. So if somebody’s got a question, they want to type it in, we’ll answer the question.
Um, you know, so it’s, you know, it’s a, you know, it’s every, so you know, the Supreme court settled this. So, everybody wants to complain about wherever merchants are doing. Also, many things people don’t understand are that some of the cities and states like New York and California, some of them on a state and a local level, said that merchants’ businesses could add a COVID-19 fee onto the rails.
Right? So many people started doing that and, you know, whatever, you know, we’re not going to talk about. COVID, whether it’s real, not natural, still around, not around. Right. But you know, those, you know, enabled businesses to add fees on. Right. So companies started adding costs to that. One of the things I was telling Justin and I said, there’s a lot of restaurants have started installing some software into their systems now.
Right. So that when people are ordering to go, I’m sure if you order any food. The restaurants are probably telling you to please order from our website; please order from our website. And they’ll let you know, and I’m going to say stop using door dash, please. Like as, uh, you know, entrepreneur and small business owner myself, like those types of third party companies are killing those businesses.
It’s convenient to use, but they charge 20 to 30% of the business. Some companies try to fight back on that because they don’t want to lose business. So they raise the prices. So you’ll go to DoorDash or Uber rides, and then the price will be 20 or 30% higher than it is at the restaurant to recoup those fees that they got to pay.
Right. Because otherwise, businesses are making no profit, you know, those are low, low-profit margin. Right. And then for everyone who’s ordering those types of services. Suppose you wonder why your food is trash, but you love the restaurant, but when you get it through door dash, they don’t show the same love and respect that that restaurant offers you to get that food.
So I don’t know, I’ve never injured. I don’t like door dash or Postmates or any of that crap. I’ve hardly ever used that. I tried it like once or twice. I don’t give a middleman my money in general. Wasn’t I don’t care what it is. Like, I’ll give you an example. One of our clients, they were using, uh, a restaurant and they, uh, they were using, I don’t remember what delivery services.
Trash any, any of that? Right. So wish them all. Well, what happened was, is they started to get terrible reviews on their website, and people were like, oh, the food was cold. The food was messed up, the sauce or whatever was all over the bag, and everything was disgusting. And then the problem with that is, is that that person goes and doesn’t chargeback right on their credit card DoorDash or whoever they don’t care about the restaurant. So they rip the money out of the restaurants. I count, right? The restaurant lost the money, and it wasn’t even their fault. And that’s just another reason not to use door dash or those. Order or in places, you know, I, you know, I get, if we enjoy some of the food and, do you do, go the extra mile, go pick it up yourself or make sure you’re ordering from them, and they deliver it themselves.
Okay. So like, and then, you know, like, as we said before, too, a lot of these restaurants aren’t, they weren’t equipped for delivering their food anyway. Right. So like when you get the quality of the food is good. It ended up being garbage by the time you get it because, you know, the containers that they have aren’t there.
It’s just, yeah. Well, there are a lot of records of the place that go outside. You’ll be okay. If you need to wear a mask, if you’re vaccinated, don’t be a weirdo and start yelling at people who aren’t wearing their mask, but or being weird and yelling at people who aren’t wearing a mask.
Just worry about yourself and go to go to the restaurant and enjoy. Yeah, well outside, man. You’ll be all right. Yeah, it’s a problem. You go pick up the food directly. And a lot of restaurants, I talked to a restaurant owner the other day, and he told me the cost of like all the containers, right through the roof.
It’s through the roof, like all the plastic containers, or like they’re trying to use eco-friendly stuff. I know. I can imagine this, the manufacturers of that stuff. Breaking into bucks, right? Crazy order it for your businesses. Probably have to be quite tricky. Like I was in the store the other day, somebody mentioned that I saw some people looking at the price of tinfoil and they couldn’t believe it.
I hardly ever buy tinfoil. I think I have a couple of rolls in my house that I’ve had forever. Because my mom, you know, is always buying too much stuff. So she’s like, oh, here, I have all this tinfoil. So I haven’t bought tin foil and a quite a long time, you know? And then I looked at the price, and I was like, wow, that’s crazy.
It was like 20 bucks for like a thing of foil. I mean, the prices of everything are just crazy. Crazy, crazy, crazy. I mean, I see some companies like their prices are staying. You know, somewhat in line, but they can also be; those companies can be losing money. There’s one thing that I have noticed, though, like, I, I hope I’m not about to shoot myself in the foot because I’m like, I’m going through this little fitness journey, weight loss journey.
So I’ve had to buy t-shirts a lot. Yeah. And clothing hasn’t moved like that. I bought some shirts recently, and then I just bought some, you know, I’ve been buying shirts. You’re saying that the quality of some of the t-shirts has changed, like the materials change, for sure.
It depends on the brand, right? Yeah. But I’m talking about price-wise, though, I like, uh, you know, I was, you know, for a regular graphic tee or a brand and, you know, it’s anywhere from like 30 to 40 bucks, right. I haven’t seen, uh, that I wear, you know, I’m not saying everything, but I haven’t seen the prices in the brands that I wear fluctuate or go up.
On the other hand, I’ve seen shoes go and get more expensive. Well, you know, if you look on some of the websites, especially for like gym shoes and stuff, people have. Wearing more casual type clothing in the law, you know, has been a trend for probably the last decade, but it’s made a killing. Still, it’s sped up in the previous two years, casual clothing and workout clothes and the type of pants people wear.
A lot of people aren’t wearing suits anymore. I mean, the dry cleaning businesses to be DEC is probably down. I know the guy that just closed his store, man. Sad, sad. I mean, it’s his closes business shirt all the time, but now like whatever I wear company, you know, company chair, right? Not a business shirt because things are casual.
You’re having a meeting. And so I have a suit and tie on to have a zoom. I mean, I’ve been going to talk to bankers; they’re wearing. Yeah, it is gotten more relaxed, which is good because when I first started doing like web design, 10, 11 years ago, like to come into the office for like a meeting, you had to have a button up and loafers and khaki pants and your shirt tucked in.
Not me, man. I don’t, and I’m glad that it’s more chill, and you know, the nerds run the world anyway. So like, let us just chill. We’re in the back like you don’t even see us. Like this is the most you’ve seen me in probably ten years. Many people that I used to be a chef so that I would be in the back and you know, it’s echoing in the kitchen, and you don’t care.
That anyone knows you or any of that, you back there making it, so you make the best food. Yeah, exactly. Here. We ensure we take care of our clientele and provide good information for a business owner. So I know we’re comfortable; why we’re doing it right? No. So if you’re a business owner you want to find out more about cash discounts, we’ll post some links in the show.
Below the live, we’ll post some notes there, but what kind of resources you can look at to find out about non-cash adjustment fees, Cash discounts, or surcharges at your business. And we’ll post some notes on that. We’ll post the link to the ebooks that talk about cash discounts.
And we’ll put a link into the New York Post article to give them some credit for our live broadcast today. And you can take a look at it. I mean, what are you going to be more upset about? About $5 and 52 cents? Or, I mean, if it were just one burger, would it be, it would’ve been like, it was 40 bucks, right?
Come on—you $7 burger. I mean, that’s just, I want to know like I saw the restaurant’s name. It was called Poco. Cause it’s in the article. And we saw like it said brunch, and the brunch menu did come with other stuff, but still, that’s a $47 for a burger. We don’t know if she had brunch or just got a burger, but right.
$47 for a burger. Even if it came with a bottomless mimosa, that’s an expensive burger and inexpensive mimosa. Right. That’s an issue that’s very, very expensive. But, as I said, man, when you put it in perspective, it is $47 for brunch. But how much can you drink? I can probably get like cheap vodka, cheap orange juice that cheap champagne, champagne, you know, it’s not that expensive.
What will it cost them six bucks for that still? That’s a $47 burger. Again, I don’t know. That’s a lot of Rocky. Do you like burgers? He likes burgers. I’m going to show rocking on the podcast before we sign out. You were sleeping. Okay. Rocky leave sleeping dogs to lie. So thanks for listening to the live today.
If you want to, leave them a comment. After watching this, I’m sure people will see the recording afterward. You can leave some comments there, and we’ll answer your questions either later or tomorrow, and we’ll answer any questions you have. And we’ll also put some notes down on all three platforms so that people can leave us comments.
You can leave comments and get some of the resources we’re talking about. Follow B2B Vault on all the social media platforms. @b2bvault. Check out the website B2BVault.info, where you can get more information and catch up on past episodes. There’s a form for you to contact Allen if you have any questions for us or any tips, resources, or anything you want to talk about. There’s also a form for sponsorship opportunities if you’re interested in sponsoring a podcast. We want to thank our sponsors, NPS printer, nationwide payment systems, NPS bank, and the payment advisory board. Thank you for everything you do and for keeping the lights on and the water running. All right. We’re out baby peace out.
