A popular fast-casual chain is making an unprecedented move to stop accepting cash

The popular salad chain Sweetgreen is about to go cashless.The fast-casual chain, which has roughly 60 locations in the Northeast and California, will soon only accept payment via its app or credit card.All Sweetgreen locations in New York, California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania will stop accepting cash on January 18. Locations in Maryland, Washington, DC, and Virginia will go cashless in March.Boston, where state laws require businesses to accept cash payments, will be exempt from the new policy.The switch will make Sweetgreen one of the largest chains in the nation to completely ditch cash, but the change probably won't affect too many customers.Cash purchases makeup less than 10% of Sweetgreen sales."[Cashless] started with an imperative that we've always had at Sweetgreen: How do we simplify things'" Sweetgreen co-founder Jonathan Neman told Business Insider.Last January, six Sweetgreen locations stopped accepting cash in a test that proved to be a success.According to Neman, the locations that cut cash were able to speed up serviceby 10% because workers didn't have to spend timecounting money. Going cashless also reduces the threat of theft or robbery.Going cashless has gone hand-in-hand with Sweetgreen's emphasis ononline and mobile ordering, which tends to make peoplespend more. Customers who order and pay online or via app now make up 30% of Sweetgreen's sales.Refusing to allow customers to pay with cash does have some downsides, though.Neman said Sweetgreen's biggest challengein going cashless will be making surecustomers understand the reasoning behind the change. Employees will serve in the "front lines" explaining cashless payments to customers. Sweetgreen will also publish a Medium blog post explaining the change and post clear signage that customers willsee before they getin line to order.Another problemis that7% of the US populationdoesn't have a bank account, meaning they will beautomatically excluded from orderingSweetgreen.Nemansaid Sweetgreenhopes to address this issue through continued community outreach, as well as potentially exploring newformats of stores that fit different customers' needs.Going cashless is just one of Sweetgreen's plans for building a forward-thinking restaurant chainmany of which are driven bythe company's in-house tech team. Other initiatives include growing online orders, building a new, more engagement-focused app to be released next year, and collectingdata that allows for more complete knowledge of everything from kitchen prep to customer preferences."The restaurant industry is so behind on this and so ripe for innovation," said Neman. "It's very very exciting."SEE ALSO:7 chains that will dominate the restaurant industry in 2017Join the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: Here's why people wait in such long lines to buy salad at Sweetgreen
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