"We don't need no stinkin' dollars!"
Posted on 01/07/2007 2:36:11 PM PST by kellynla
Pizza lovers who don't happen to have American currency on them can still purchase their favorite pies with Mexican pesos, thanks to a Texas-based restaurant chain.
Starting this week, Pizza Patrón outlets, which caters heavily to Mexicans, will offer the alternative form of payment.
"We're trying to reach out to our core customer," Antonio Swad, president of Pizza Patrón Inc., told the Dallas Morning News.
"We know they come back [from Mexico] and have pesos left over. We want to be a convenient place for them to spend their pesos."
It's believed no other food chain operating so far from the Mexican border is allowing customers to pay with foreign currency.
Swad said he's prepared to take criticism from American consumers possibly offended by the bypassing of greenbacks.
"We're not really interested in finding the safest spot on the board," he told the paper. "We know the purity of our intention, and we're willing to take the heat when there is heat."
About 60 percent of Pizza Patrón customers and 45 percent of its franchisees are Hispanic.
"If you're not in a border town, I don't see the functional benefit," said Juan Faura, president and chief executive of Cultura, a Dallas-based marketing and advertising firm. "I would see it as a move by the chain to communicate unequivocally to the Hispanic market that they are for them."
"I don't see any other reason for it," Faura added.
Andrew Gamm, Pizza Patrón's director of brand development, said the company has already seen customers spending "a couple hundred pesos" without any advertisement of the service during a test in a Mesquite location.
Founded in 1986, Pizza Patrón has gone from four locations to 59 and more than 40 under development across the American Southwest.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
I don't see the problem here.
Greedy capitalists! :-)
As long as they don't take dollars and give pesos in change!
It is their company, I don't care if they take old beer bottles for payment.
Algore invented pizza. That's an Inconvenient Truth.
That will be 150 pesos please.
I have a few pesos, who in W. Texas doesn't? I've often thought of using my Mexican money in the local stores who cater to the Mexican people.
This could catch on, if Mexican Dinero is considered legal tender, that's what I'll use! LOL!
Up here we always have some canadian change in our pockets. I went to Texas once and didn't think anything of it when I handed a cashier a Canadian quarter. She looked at me like I was an idiot trying to rip her off.
I know in Toronto I've had no problem spending US dollars, and it's not particularly close to the border.
Do they accept gold bouillon?
That would be smarter.
Well, she probly aint never saw such a thang before!
Isn't that their trademarked figurehead The Pizza Banditio?
Come now, this is Texas, she didn't think you were an idiot because she thought you were trying to rip her off...she thought you were and idiot because you went to Canada. :-)
"The same people who cry about dollars going to Mexico"
Well here we are, only the seventh day in the year and you've already made the top of the list of the 2007 Tagline Award "Freedom of speech makes it easier to spot the idiots" with your inane comment.
And what was your screen name before you got banned and took "wiffle head" on 12/11?
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