It was a moment every merchant fears.
Not long after I opened my gourmet grocery in Brooklyn four years ago, one of my suppliers mentioned that the big-time deli owner in the neighborhood planned to open a huge deli nearby, offering pretty much everything I sold.
At about the same time, a nice woman walked into my store and asked if I wanted to buy an ATM. I was skeptical until she showed me that a store down the street was bringing in $4,000 a month in income from his ATM. At $2,800 for the machine, I was sold.
But like so much in the crazy world of entrepreneurship, the ATM became way more than an income generator.
As many of you know, handling cash is a huge pain. It is time-consuming to count and risky to transport. I’d rather pay the 3 percent credit card fee than have to deal with the stress of bringing $10,000 a week to the bank.
After installing the ATM, though, it became my bank. I put all the $20s from the register into it and undercut the competition by charging $1 instead of $2 to withdraw cash.
All of a sudden, our problem wasn’t too much cash in the store. It was too little. We now have an armored car deliver additional cash to feed the ATM, and we limit withdrawals to $100.
Overall, adding an ATM was a simple yet smarter business decision for us. Oh, and the foot traffic created by having the low-cost ATM in the neighborhood makes it a lot easier to compete with the deli owner down the street.
