I'm so mixed on Southern Sun. The food is OUTSTANDING. The servers are lovely people, the beers are solid, diverse and reliable.

But the management decisions on how to run the place - everything in cash, everything added up and written down by hand - are so bad that every single visit, when I leave I feel SO ANNOYED, even after good beers and great food.

I cannot understand (and I've thought about it a lot - there's plenty of time to think while you wait) how the time spent doing everything by hand, re-tallying bills that are incorrect (I've seen my share), giving the same cash-only speech to customers that you've seen 100 times, manually writing orders that are usually made right but sometimes wrong, all of that meaningless work adds up to less than 2.5% for the owners in opportunity cost.

It takes forever to get a total and head out the door. It takes forever to get change, to order, to go to the ATM if it's not busted, forever to do everything - because everything is required to be done the slowest way possible, by people who are working their butts off against the crazy machine. The whole process is insane.

And from a business perspective, all that lost time is lost people enjoying food and beers. It's lost customers who say, "I'd love to go to Southern Sun and grab a burger, but I don't have two full hours." It's lost satisfaction because they've decided to make the main thing being cash-only, not their food, drink and service. It's like they don't want to run their business well, or the whole thing is a front for some other endeavor.

It is 2024. Not 1974. 2024. In the past 50 years, we've developed new and wonderful ways to make lists and do addition besides the pen and paper.

I would bet huge money that Southern Sun would have happier customers, lower overhead, and a more thriving business if they'd just accept credit cards. Maybe even delve all the way into wireless ordering like Osaka's or Avery. There are good, simple tools that make your customers and your employee's lives better, and won't break your hippy souls. I promise.

Please, Southern Sun. Please consider using them.