Tasty Crypto? How a Miami restaurant educates the community on crypto tipping | Interview

I'm Ornella Hernandez with Cointelegraph and I'm in Clearwater, Florida where a new restaurant hopes to fully reflect the crypto space from its decor to its food item menus. And it even allows customers to pay using crypto. Let's go talk to the owner, Ricardo Barone. So Ricardo, tell me about how you got started in the restaurant. Who gave you the idea and how it was to set it up.

So we've had a restaurant before and we had some restaurants that we didn't have the liberty that we have right now. So we wanted to be more independent and do something new and something that was more us and we could bring our flavors into it. I was thinking about it for a while and then also I've had crypto conversations with my son, which we had for years. And I was totally on the other side, like totally. Like I would not believe that it was going to happen. And I was afraid that he was going to lose his money and all that. And within time and within him, you know, seeing things that he'd done, starting watching it more then it was more, I guess for me, more mainframe. When it was on Robinhood because I was trading and I've been trading forever. But I also would just because of the new thing, I was doing it on Robinhood as well. So then I see that they had a few. I got in and we actually got lucky because by the time I got in it was a little bit over a year. So it was like with dogecoin, that wasn't even. That was considered a joke that he even told me to be careful that even when I got some and I made a little bit of money, he said yeah, yeah, but get rid of it. It's a joke. So the guy that's telling me that he knows and he's talking about litecoin and bitcoin and all that, he tells me that. But then I did kept some with the good. So then it helped me make this transition easier because of the money spent and all that came. Something came from it, from actually that. So, so and I was then also trading, holding some bitcoin, holding some of the more known ethereums and stuff like that and then learning about them.

What are your long term goals for the restaurant? Are you hoping for this to be like more of an education initiative along with the restaurant? Of course. But are you looking to educate the public as well?

So the idea is to promote crypto and the use and education in a light way already with approach or with people that Want to come and do, like, conversations or want to have, like, 10 people here or 20 people here. A couple of people talk to me about it. I'm also working with a couple of people that have news venue that are starting. My idea would be to set that in a system where, like, the employees will all benefit. So anybody can do. Any of the employees could be trained. And we go. We do it. We put. And it's like, on a pool. And the employees benefit, like, from, like, the kickbacks and stuff from, like, Coinbase, you know, like the. Well, I. I have it just on my account, but I've told them that as I'm training them, you know, that whenever one of them then we're gonna do that. You know that whenever they're doing it. The ones in the front, which should be soon. I just got this done two days ago, and actually Haley took a payment in bitcoin. Just right there while I was talking to the Neil Caboodo thing, Haley took a payment. These are like, my receipt from Coinbase. So I started printing them out. The mayor and. Yeah, so, like, if you. You have your crypto and you put. And the cool thing, too is that you write the amount, not me. So, like I tell you, okay, so your account is 35 bucks. Now you're gonna put. Okay, 35 bucks, send. And your thing has the thing to read the code, whenever, whatever, Coinbase or whichever. Even your wallet, your personal wallet. So you can send it from anywhere to one of these. And it happens immediately. Like, well, bitcoin, depending. Because, like, these guys use the Lightning network, and it happened immediately before Bitcoin can take a couple hours, but at least you see that is confirmed. Like, if you're paying me, I see that you got it confirmed. So it doesn't matter that if I don't see it, it's gonna come because you cannot get a refund on crypto. So it's safe. And so it's not like a credit card that you can come and then go and call and say, I wasn't there. People cannot do that with crypto, so that's pretty safe for us. And plus, the fees are less, too, because the person that sent me, for example, the 70 bucks, he posted that what he paid was 003. Something like that.

Does business change according to any movements in the market? Any movements in the market?

You know that I was kind of, like, afraid of that, thinking, you know, people are down because the crypto is down. It's too early for me to say that, because right now we're like, in the slowest season of the year in the beach and whatnot. It was lower than the issue yesterday that everything, you know, crashing went up. It was sort of unexpected, but I don't think that it had to do with that as much.

All right, so now can you walk me a little bit through the menu and what your favorite items are?

Yeah, yeah. So fan favorites are definitely, like, the crypto Cuban. So the Cubans are first. The club we sell a lot of it is huge, too. So a lot of times, if it's somebody that's, like, more, you know, on the petite side, I tend to tell them, hey, share it. Or, you know, you can take some home because we make it real big. And then the Doge jug, it's actually a knockwurst, so it's been pretty popular because we don't do, like, a regular hot dogs or kids dog. They're all boar's heads, so it's pretty good stuff. But then for the Doge jugs, it's a nice, thick knockwurst, so it's been pretty popular. Thank you.