“I was in Amsterdam on holiday and went to a very child friendly café with the family. We went to pay at the end and they said, ‘We don’t take cash, we only take card,’“ Natalie explains.
“I walked away thinking, ‘Genius! That’s a great move.’ I hadn’t seen it anywhere else.”
Having conducted a bit of research and listened to customer feedback at the ten year old Primrose Hill site (below), the benefits of being cash free soon became abundantly clear before opening their second site at the start of the year.
“One is to do with cleanliness. You are constantly washing your hands in this business and cash is one of the dirtiest things we have.
“The speed of transaction is much quicker. The fluidity of the whole process is just seamless. When you’re taking contactless, debit card, credit card, mobile phone, apple watch, anything, it’s so much quicker.
“Also, in terms of security for staff, there would be times where someone is cashing up at night on their own. We haven’t got that worry here. At the end of the night, to close the till it takes seconds. Safety is a big thing." 
Located so closely to Portobello Road market, it might seem crazy to turn away customers who predominantly pay by cash, but Natalie explains that the loss is minimal and more often than not customers surprise her.
“We had an 80 year old lady in the other day, and you might think someone older wouldn’t have credit card or contactless, but she said, ‘oh yeah, no problem’ and she used her contactless.”
Another of Natalie’s concerns is to not alienate tourists from further afield who experience extra charges when abroad. 70p on top of your coffee is off putting, but Natalie has found that most are relieved to use card as tourists only take a certain amount of cash on holiday.
Being cashless at Sweet Things has been without any major hiccups, but frequency of staff tips is an issue because there’s no exchange of money. However, ways around this have already been explored.
“We’re going to have a button on our till and we’ll know exactly what is payment and what is tip. When it comes to payroll it will be done by how many hours you’ve worked a week, so it’s fair.”
Natalie firmly believes more food businesses will follow suit and is surprised more operators aren’t making use of modern technology already, “just give it another five years,” she says.