At least in my experience, I think the perception of quality comes from the fact that these places are the kinds of places that just never modernized beyond cas

At least in my experience, I think the perception of quality comes from the fact that these places are the kinds of places that just never modernized beyond cash because they’re already good enough to always be busy or past capacity. There is no incentive to modernize because doing so would not increase business, and not doing so does not decrease business enough to matter. One of the best things about the cash only places I frequent is that they don’t have to deal with delivery services injecting themselves into the business model and consuming kitchen capacity for people not actually present. This leads to faster service overall and at worst the speed of service slows down proportionally to the number of customers at the location at any given point. And usually these places are family run so you’re always seeing the same folks behind the counter and they actually care. All combined, these factors lead to the elevated status that many ascribe to cash only places.