By: Esther Gowin
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Chartwells Dining recently announced that all dining services on the University of Arkansas’ campus will not be accepting cash starting on Oct. 5th.
The Vice President of Chartwells Operations on campus, Andrew Lipson, said the main reason they have decided to move toward cash free transactions is for safety reasons during the current pandemic.
“We felt like it was another good precaution with COVID.” Said Lipson. “We wanted to eliminate any handing back and forth of money.”
Currently, employees in dining services are required to wash their hands after every cash transaction. Lipson said the process of making this decision included tracking how money was being spent.
“We looked at the entire transaction records of how money is being spent.” Said Lipson. “For students, it is a very small number, because of apps and dining dollars.”
According to Lipson, only about 2 percent of transactions in dining services are cash. These include any transactions students, faculty, staff and outside customers may perform.
In an effort to make transactions even more contactless, dining services now provide customers a way to swipe their own cards. Dining services on campus are still will accepting Dining Dollars, Razorbucks, debit and credit cards.