Earlier this afternoon I ran 4 miles (6.5km) to a Portuguese Cafe because I enjoy Pastel de nata and coffee and since I wanted some exercise I thought I’d tag paying the cafe a visit onto a run. My ulterior motive was to see if the owner would be open to a discussion on Bitcoin and accepting it as payment.
I asked her if she accepts Bitcoin which threw her massively. She proceeded to ask me if I ‘do Bitcoin’. I didn’t really understand what she meant by that, so I said ‘I like to pay in bitcoin where possible to support adoption.’ She then said I could email her and she gave me her email address. In my head I was like, but I’m here, you’re not busy, so why not ask me questions?!! When she brought me over what I’d ordered I said she is welcome to ask me any questions she might have and I told her that by accepting bitcoin she’ll get a lot more custom since Bitcoiners are good at going out of their way to support the cause. She didn’t seem comfortable at any point of our interaction and she didn’t take up the opportunity to ask me questions, even though she wasn’t busy in the slightest. I then proceeded to drink my coffee, eat my pastel de nata and email her about the merits of accepting bitcoin as payment!!!
This was my first real effort at trying to onboard a small local business and it was disappointing how disengaged she was, when in fact I was trying to help her business. I sent her a nice email though, so it’ll be interesting to see if she engages later down the line. Watch this space!!