Attention Operators, communities around the country need your help. They need you to break open your piggy banks and take your coins to your local banks.
One message from the Page-Lake Powell Chamber of Commerce read:
“The financial institutions in Page are asking for your help. If you have any coins you would like to turn in, please take them to your local banks. Anyone who has a cupholder full of change in their car or a piggy bank stuffed with coins can help with the shortage.”
One of the aftermaths of the pandemic last year was a temporary cap placed on coin orders. The Federal Reserve reinstated the cap in May 2021 to ensure fair distribution of coins.
The pandemic indeed has transformed how people shop and spend. Weary consumers who prefer cash over debit/credit cards are still reluctant to use a currency that can spread bacteria and viruses.
If you’re still operating a coin-operated arcade, you may have been feeling the pinch. Even the AMOA is hearing reports about banks refusing to fulfill coin orders.
Attention AMOA Members: We have received reports from the field that some banks are denying coinage, specifically quarters, to their customers because of the limited inventory. Keep Your Coins! pic.twitter.com/yN3G9Jvazq
— AMOA (@coinop) July 13, 2021
You have two choices: A) You wait until coins start circulating again, and B) You take matters into your own hands to adapt to the shift in consumer behavior.
Here are six signs you need to go cashless as soon as possible:
1) You have regular redemption tickets and coin jams.
If you’re an operator making service calls to fix coin jams in your machines, you’re not only spending time and labor; you’re missing out on revenue opportunities.
Let’s run some mental calculations for a minute. Say a $1 game goes down, and you (or an arcade technician) spend 2 hours fixing it. Multiply that time by $15/hr (or more if you put a higher value on your time), and you get ~$30. If you typically make $15/hr on that game, you miss out on another $30 during the downtime. That’s costing you $60 for that single machine. Now multiply that amount by ten games over a month, and you just lost $600.
2) You spend time picking up spilled coin or token buckets.
Accidents do happen. If you’ve been running a coin-operated arcade for a while, you’ve probably spilled your fair share of coin buckets. Since time is money when you’re paying employees, you spent another $15 on labor to pick up the coins.
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3) You don’t know precisely how well games perform.
High-performing arcades have a good sense of which games resonate with their guests and which ones don’t. They make sound decisions on replacing or keeping them to maximize revenue potential.
If you’ve been counting quarters for each game, then logging them on a spreadsheet, you have a general idea of which ones. If you’re not, you are missing out on essential data points to make sound business decisions.
Watch this success story to learn how one route operator uses the data from a cashless system.
4) Your guests complain about games eating tokens or quarters.
“The machine ate my token.” The five words you and your staff hate to hear. When expectations of playing a game after you put in the tokens don’t match the reality, it creates a negative experience for your guests.
Sure, some shady people try to get free games from you, but the customer is always right—Right?
With a good game card reader and system, there’s no question that the credits on a card are used. You can rest assured that you won’t hear the dreaded phrase in your arcade again.
5) You get negative Yelp reviews about games eating tokens or quarters.
Whether you like it or not, your online reviews affect decisions on where people spend their hard-earned money. That’s the reason why reputation management is so crucial to longevity in the amusement business.
If you are getting negative reviews about games eating tokens on Yelp, it’s a sign that you should do something about it. The longer you let the problem linger, the more it’s going to hurt your business.
6) Your cash mysteriously disappears.
Cash is the lifeblood of any business. When you find cash missing, it’s never a comfortable situation. You have to figure out which employee it was and when you do, you have to have the Talk. With a cashless system, your cash control becomes much more robust. You get reports on all the sales you generate in real-time so that you can solve the mystery of the disappearing cash quickly.
It’s time to go cashless.
The problem with coin circulation is real. If it hasn’t already, it’s coming to a town near you. If you see any of the signs listed above, then you have more reasons to take action.
Investing in a cashless card system for your arcade can seem daunting at first, but we’re happy to guide you through the evaluation process. One thing we love more than arcades is seeing them grow to multiple locations.
Many of our customers report seeing a 20-40% increase in sales once they start using our card system. That’s because they’re now capturing the missed debit and credit card revenue.
Will you wait for consumers to break their piggy banks? Or will you adapt to the shifts in consumer behavior?
Amusement Connect is a game card system that combines the latest technology with business intelligence to optimize the player experience.
We are powered by people and our collective mission to bring innovation, value, and the best possible experience to our customers and their players.
