By Tom Ryan
Talk about embracing the Hispanic customer! Dallas-based chain Value Giant announced last Thursday that their stores will begin accepting Mexican pesos as payment.
The Value Giant store at Southwest Center Mall, according to MyFox News in Dallas/Fort Worth, hosted a promotional event on Saturday to introduce the new policy. Value Giant is a regional discounter selling groceries, apparel, electronics and general merchandise.
Value Giant's decision follows a controversial move by a Dallas-based pizza chain to accept pesos.
In January, Pizza Patrón launched a "pizza for pesos" marketing campaign. Customers could pay for their food with either paper currency from Mexico or American dollars. About 60 percent of Pizza Patrón's customers and 45 percent of its franchisees are Latino.
News of that flexibility sparked abusive e-mails, irate calls and even death threats to Pizza Patrón headquarters from some who linked it to the anti-immigration situation. It also garnered national attention from CNN, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Colbert Report, and right-wing commentator Rush Limbaugh.
"All right, you know this stuff doesn't go away. It's just like gay marriage. It's like illegal immigration," a website Immigration Watchdog, quoted Mr. Limbaugh as saying. "It'll grow. It will expand."
But some marketers hailed Pizza Patrón's decision.
"I think it's a very interesting idea," Ron Paul, president of Technomic Inc., the restaurant market research firm, told the Dallas Morning News. "They are catering to that audience."
"We're trying to reach out to our core customer," Antonio Swad, president of Pizza Patrón. "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."
Pizza Patrón later reported first-quarter sales jump 35 percent, partly due to the pesos campaign. In one store, sales vaulted 146 percent. The program was to run until late April but is now permanent.
"Our customers love the program," Andrew Gamm, Pizza Patrón's director of brand development told the Dallas Morning News.
Discussion Questions: Should American retailers and restaurants 'explore accepting' Mexican pesos in regions with a heavily Mexican populace? What do you think of the opportunity in such a strategy, as well as the risks?