The New York Times reports (and more):
Pizza Patrón, a Dallas-based pizza chain with many Latino customers,
has begun accepting pesos as payment, hitting a nerve in the nationwide
immigration debate. Critics call the idea unpatriotic.
I see five readings:
1. This is testament to the remarkable new-found stability of the Mexican peso. Immigrant arrivals still hold pesos rather than ditching them ASAP.
2. People could have free banking or competing currencies already, if they wanted it.
3. The pizza chain is receiving lots of positive publicity with its Latino customers. I saw this same item on Primer Impacto last week.
4. If everyone accepted pesos, currency substitution effects would make the demand for dollars harder to predict, and thus monetary policy would be harder to implement. Inflation would accelerate the velocity of monetary circulation to a greater degree, if dollar inflation is high just switch from dollars to pesos.
5. Change is given at the rate of twelve pesos to the dollar, so this is price discrimination against patriotic and possibly unsavvy Mexican customers.
I consider this a poor indication of whether a person is patriotic or not. It’s just business, after all. If he wants to accept Pesos, or Euros, or Yen, or anything, that’s his business.
John Thacker is correct. Seattle businesses have always accepted Canadian dollars, and it’s a two hour drive from the border.
The owner of the chain has already expressed the fact that this is a publicity move and not much else. It’s targeted towards families with ties to Mexico who may have visited south of the border over the holidays and have unexchanged pesos(which is why he doesn’t expect it’ll last beyond the current February end date). The exchange rate is also set for the entire period of the promotion, and includes an exchange premium.
Are these patriotic Americans aware of who’s paying for most of their government services?
You know what, all those Bugaboo Creek restaurants accept Canadian currency! Those unpatriotic bastards!
Would these be the same critics that would complain if a business outside the US refused to accept US money? It should be up to the business to decide what additional currencies they want to accept.
I live in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, right across from Detroit, Michigan, and almost every store has the US Dollar exchange rate posted in clear view. I’m not hearing any Canadians complaining that is unpatriotic. In fact, it makes good business sense. Many businesses in Detroit will accept Canadian money – some even have special Canadian money at par promotions. Nothing new here. Move along.
As a Brit of Irish ancestry, many is the time I’ve travelled ‘back’ to Ireland for a family gathering at short notice. We rarely changed money & often paid for hotels, food & drink in Sterling (usually at a small premium – often negotiable). I’ve also paid for goods in London with leftover holiday Euros & in Sweden & Norway with Norwegian & Swedish Krone (respectively) & Euro. Pre-Euro I’ve paid for goods in Spain & Portugal (the most surprising – to me – omission in Tyler’s map of places visited btw) in the other’s currency & with Deutschemarks in Austria, Holland, France, Denmark & Belgium. I also once went to Malaysia spending only Singapore Dollars (and was often given change in like). As a child on holiday in communist Bulgaria my Sterling (& even my adidas t-shirt!) proved more fungible than local currency, but maybe that’s no great surprise in hindsight.
Maybe a decent Dallas pizzaria would already have a peso account to pay for decent jalapeños, maybe taco flour & other ingredients?? This would render transaction costs negligible.
I’m surprised this is considered unusual, but then I’ve never been to Dallas…
I wouldn’t be surprised if Tim’s accepted U.S. currency somewhere like Edmonton, Fort McMurray, or Yellowknife, which are a long, long way away from the border.
Mike–
I think we’re using different terminology here. No offense, but “close to the border” has a much different meaning in US parlance than in Canadian. By the US measure, nearly the entire population of Canada is “close to the border,” including Edmonton I’d say. Maybe not Fort McMurray.
Doce es correcto.
¿No adora usted el arbitraje?
Yes, no whining when you get a death threat. For using pesos.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Local coverage suggests that many of the peso users are relatives visiting locals or people who’ve just come back from Mexico to visit their families. That makes sense, since local employers don’t pay in pesos–though I suspect many pay in cash. A local reporter who tried to cash in some pesos for pizza discovered, however, that they only take bills, no coins.
I’ve never seen an American in an airport in Europe wanting to pay for something in dollars. Oh no siree. And if you’re a European with Euros showing up at, say, the train station at the airport in Copenhagen, it would never occur to you to buy tickets with Euros instead of Danish crowns. The only reason you would want to do so is if you were making some insiduous imperialist political statement.
How can red-blooded Americans stand for this? Doesn’t it make you want to cry, to see these barbarians destroy our culture from within?
toad, unless you have some evidence of an underground economy that would enable people to earn pesos in the US, accepting pesos at a US business is simply going to make things more convenient for visitors to the US. I can’t see any downside to that.
To the person who said it would make it harder to track curreny levels and the money supply if this trend were to grow. I have been able to spend American dollars in France, Germany, and Turkey, no problem. In a small town in France (Borme La Mimosa), I was able to spend dollars in a small cafe at a fantastic exchange rate. How is that any different? Is it only if someone will take something other than dollars in the US? Was that French restaurant owner unpatriotic to France?
tino,
This isn’t New York. This is the NY times writing about Pizza Patrón, a Dallas-based pizza chain with many Latino customers, many of whom presumably did not fly but drive across the border. I would think many of them visted relatives in Mexico for Christmas and have a few pesos left over after coming back. Apparently so did Pizza Patrón whichh is why they are having this promotion which ends in Febuary.
When I come back from Mexico on vacation, I often have 100-200 pesos left over…even if I’ve been places like Cancun where they take American dollars (change is made in pesos). It’s not worth 20 minutes to me to change thirty bucks worth of pesos to dollars. If I were near a Pizza Padron, I’d probably buy a pizza there to get rid of the pesos.
Hat’s off to the Pizza Padron guy for pulling off a coup in terms of marketing/free publicity. I’m in Houstn and had never heard of Pizza Padron. I’m likely to eat there just to find out how good the pizza is.o
Bodracir: That whole “barbarian” posting was so over the top, I’m sure it was intended as a joke. Octavio Paz, Freda Kahlo and Diego Riviera don’t pop to mind when I think about “barbarians.”
fuck anyone who attempts to use PESOS in AMERICA. I speak out death to all fucks who would do it, and death to the owners of Pizza Padron.
SO MOTE IT BE!
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Pizza Patron was created specifically by and for the Latino community. It was not only shrewd capitalism targeted to (at that point) an underserved demographic, it was aimed at serving an area of the city that (then) no other pizza majors were serving. Meaning Southeast Dallas, where I live. Prior to Pizza Patron, which is headquatered about three blocks from my home, there was NO home delivery offered by any national chain pizza yadayadas. Patron set the bar with affordable product delivered locally. The others swiftly followed.
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