Inside the crypto restaurant after the cryptocurrency

When you are bored and hungry first opened in Long Beach in april, the burger bar not only embraced the aesthetics of cryptocurrency. It was also all-in on the digital money part.

Sure, meme-y references to rockets and oxen dotted the walls, and Bored Apes – the comic book monkeys that celebrities like Paris Hilton and Post Malone have described as six-figure investments – covered the cups and trays. But customers were also offered the opportunity to pay for their meals in cryptocurrency. The restaurant put its bitcoin where its mouth was, so to speak.

Not even three months later, in the midst of a cryptocurrency that has some investors looking for the door, that is not always the case.

During a break in the lunch rush last afternoon, while a cashier stamped paper bags with the fast-food restaurant’s logo, twin menus hanging over his head – with Bored & Hungry’s meat-based and vegan options, respectively – showed prices only in old-shaped US dollars.

A smashburger: $ 9.25. Peppered French Fries: $ 3.50. A cup of soda with apetema: $ 3.50.

Missing: any mention of ethereum or apecoin, the two currencies pop-up boasted, would have made history by accepting as payment.

An employee who refused to give his name said that the store did not accept crypto payments. “Not today – I do not know,” they said, refusing to clarify how long ago the store stopped accepting crypto or whether that option would eventually return.

Owner Andy Nguyen did not respond to repeated emails. The company’s co-founder Kevin Seo later said that the restaurant has turned off its crypto payment system “from time to time” for upgrades, but currently accepts ethereum and apecoin.

With both currencies down more than 60% since early April and undergoing double-digit intraday fluctuations, it would be understandable for any company to be reluctant to accept them instead of dollars. But usefulness can also be a factor. At the restaurant’s opening, an employee told The Times that the crypto payments were unmanageable and were largely ignored by customers.

Restaurateur Andy Nguyen says he paid more than $ 330,000 for the various monkey-themed NFTs that form the basis of the restaurant’s brand.

(Brian Contreras / Los Angeles Times)

Almost three months later, it was difficult to find a protector who cared much in one way or another about the restaurant’s fidelity to the crypto case.

“Yes, ethereum is a currency in a way where you can exchange [nonfungible tokens, or] NFTs and stuff… but when it comes to buying food and all that, maybe not, ”said a crypto-enthusiast dinner, Marc Coloma, while munching on french fries outside the restaurant. “People want to keep their ethereum. They don’t want to use it.”

Michael Powers, 46, of Long Beach was smaller in the loop. He visits Bored & Hungry a lot – as often as two or three times a week, he estimated – but although the sign with apetema was what first drew him in, he did not know that the place was NFT-themed until his sons explained it to him. .

Powers’ entry into crypto, an investment in the Elon Musk-promoted currency dogecoin, did not end well, and he has no plans to try again. “I’ve had my fill” of crypto, he said – but not of the burgers, which offer an exclusive riff on In-N-Out’s “animal-style” sandwiches. (The chopped onions and creamy sauce are a nice detail that is not subject to wild fluctuations in value or exorbitant transaction fees.)

Another Long Beach resident, 30-year-old Richard Rubalcaba, said he bought into the ethereum after meeting other crypto investors during the four-hour wait at Bored & Hungry’s grand opening. But on this visit he also paid in US dollars.

“I do not know how [crypto purchases] would work with the crash, he said.

The cryptoecosystem is currently in free fallwith high-profile companies either taking drastic steps to avert disaster or simply collapsing, while the cryptocurrencies themselves plunge into value.

The two e-currencies that Bored & Hungry initially accepted, ethereum and apecoin, are down to approx. 23% and 17% of their peaks in the last year. Estimates estimate that the value of the entire sector is less than a third of what it was in early 2022.

Nor have the non-fungible tokens that form the backbone of Bored & Hungry’s brand been immune. A kind of digital trading card series built around drawings of anthropomorphic monkeys, Bored Apes counts such as Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg among their owners; someone has sold for millions of dollars. Yet they are now facing the same thing market pressure like the rest of the cryptoeconomy.

According to the crypto news Decrypt, the cheapest available NFT in the series (i.e. the “floor”) has fallen below $ 100,000 for the first time since last summer, and the project as a whole saw recently that the value was about halved over the course of a month .

It only increases the need to get new buyers into the monkey “community”.

Dinner guests can get meat-based or veggie burgers at Bored & Hungry – but when a reporter asked if cryptocurrency could be used to pay, he got no.

(Brian Contreras / Los Angeles Times)

One customer – Lindsey, 33, from San Pedro – said she did not know anything about crypto, but came to Bored & Hungry because she is a fan of the vegan burger brand it has. But, she said, the scene at the restaurant made her want to learn more about the ecosystem.

“I’m pretty much out of the world of cryptocurrency and all that,” Lindsey said, refusing to give her last name, “so I’ll definitely go home and Google it.”

Another local, Nick Jackson, 29, said he is more interested in collecting Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards – but added that previous visits to Bored & Hungry prompted him to start researching ethereum and apecoin as well.

Jessica Perez, 24, from Gardena also does not follow cryptocurrency, but traveled back to Bored & Hungry. She and her friends like the burgers, she said, “We’re considering this up there with In-N-Out, maybe even better.”

Perez has no immediate plans to invest in crypto, but says she will consider it. The restaurant “is a great way to market cryptocurrencies,” she said.

Maybe that’s what Nguyen thought when he used it more than $ 330,000 on the various monkey NFTs on display at his restaurant.

Crypto-skeptics have long warned that someone would stay and hold the bag when the hype cycle played out. Better that bag should contain a burger and fries than nothing at all.