[bryanrasmussen]

I'm confused now, if I eat at a restaurant and they bring me the bill - is that not a private debt? Yes a transaction is happening, but since I am not able to give back the food in the condition I received it the restaurant's part of the transaction is completed this means I am in debt to them until I complete my part. Sorry for the insane level of specificity here but we are on the internet and on HN so...

So I offer up the money and they say hey we only take cards here and I say well I only give cash. Your theory is what - I would be arrested, it would go to court and the court would say pay the debt at which point I can pay in cash and the restaurant can't do anything about it because at that point it is a debt and not before?

Also, cops don't have to arrest you on the restaurant's say so, the cops I know would be all take the damn cash and don't bother me.

So to reiterate the parent poster's point:

If you eat at a restaurant and then they bring you the check, they have to accept the money because that is a private debt and money is legal tender for all private debts.

If they take your order and say pay with a credit card please then they are free to do so, if you do not have a card you don't eat.

There is of course the edge case where the business makes quite clear you need to pay with a card to eat there (probably by having prominent signs saying so) and then they ask you to pay after eating and you say I only pay with cash, in which case yes I think the cops might agree to arrest you and in which case it will have to go all the way to court to get to where you can pay with cash.

And then there is the even edgier case where you say oh, damn, somebody stole my credit card but I have cash here. You think the restaurant is really going to call the police and the police are really going to arrest the person?

In short if a restaurant gives you food and you eat it they better have a way to accept cash or to accept returns of an unsanitary nature.

[galdosdi]

> in which case yes I think the cops might agree to arrest you and in which case it will have to go all the way to court to get to where you can pay with cash.

Wow. I think a lot of the people commenting in this thread don't have any familiarity with cops or service workers, like at all, if they honestly think cops will be called or that said cops will start making arrests. Nobody will call cops over this and if they did, the cops would laugh or be annoyed or just tell the clerk to just take the cash so the cops can move on to a more pressing service call. Just put yourself in their shoes and this will be obvious.

[traceroute66]

> I'm confused now, if I eat at a restaurant and they bring me the bill - is that not a private debt?

Its simple.

You chose to enter that restaurant, nobody forced you to go there.

That restaurant is perfectly entitled to set its own conditions that apply to its service to you (within reason, of course).

Hence that restaurant is perfectly entitled to say on its menu or signage or website or orally "sure we'll feed you, but we don't take cash, only cards".

If you don't like that condition, you are free to get up and leave before ordering. Just like you are free to get up before ordering if you don't like the menu, the prices or that noisy kid on the next-door table.

If you proceed to order and eat, then you have entered into a 'contract'.

The restaurant has offered you an alternative means of payment which you have accepted by proceeding to eat. Card payment was made a condition of contract.

[bloak]

You're probably right about card payment being a condition of the contract, but a contract has to be enforced by a court: the police, if they turned up, would shrug their shoulders and say it's a civil dispute. In the somewhat unlikely event of an English court being willing to accept the case and take it seriously, I would guess it would probably order that the diner pay the bill (which they could now do in cash because it is now a debt and I'm assuming traditional legal tender rules still apply), and that the restaurant pay the (probably much larger) court costs because, seeing as the diner had already offered to pay the bill in cash, the restaurant is clearly to blame for the matter coming to court and everyone's time getting wasted. The restaurant might also have to pay the diner's legal costs, if there were any, if the diner made a good impression of not having deliberately caused trouble.

[bee_rider]

I suspect most places would just not bother calling the cops (or maybe call them with the expectation that you won't stick around to be arrested), eat the loss, and ask you not to return in the future. They might not have the ability to get that money from you, but person-who-wants-to-pay-cash isn't a protected class, so the 'private property, you aren't welcome' option would probably be their go-to.