DITCH IT:

After his business was robbed for the fifth time in just over three months, the owner of Park Cafe & Coffee Bar in Baltimore decided to do something that would have seemed radical for a neighborhood business just a few years ago: He stopped taking cash. It was a desperation move, but what happened next surprised owner David Hart. His sales didn't go down.

A much larger experiment conducted by salad chain Sweetgreen, which has 66 locations on both coasts, yielded the same result. After a year-long trial, the company has decided to go completely cashless in 2017, says a spokeswoman. There were many factors in its decision, from increased transaction speed to the unhygienic nature of cash, but the first reason Sweetgreen's spokeswoman cites is the same as Mr. Hart's--keeping employees safe by reducing the chance of robbery.

The U.S. has been slowly moving toward becoming a cashless society ever since the introduction of the first general-purpose credit cards in the 1950s. But, as many businesses are discovering, it's only now possible to ditch it altogether.

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