Pacific Business Machine at 58 Orchard

Cash register suppliers might be an endangered species in this neighborhood now, but it wasn’t always that way.  At one point, the Bowery was synonymous with cash register storefronts.  In a March 2009 New York Times profile of Faerman’s [via Vanishing NY], James Barron wrote that “beneath the old Third Avenue el, among the restaurant supply stores and the flophouses and the down-and-outers who lived in them, stores trafficked in cash registers.”

Defying the odds, Pacific Business Machine, Inc. (PBM) recently opened a stateside outpost at 58N Orchard Street. According to the official website, PBM is actually based in Hong Kong, and specializes in point-of-sales cash registers and restaurant systems.  Their R&D and manufacturing is located in the city of Shenzhen, China.  Alas, the store is now obstructed by scaffolding from the construction next door.