Cafe problem: people order 1 drink and WI-FI all day

[Liberal_in_LA]

Cafes juggle needs of Wi-Fi regulars, walk-ins
Katherine Seligman, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, January 8, 2010

They come, they order, they plug in to the Internet. And then they work and sit. And sit.

"I Twittered out this morning saying I really wanted to work with someone today," said Thomas Knoll, an independent community and customer information consultant, working one day with a Twitter mate at the Coffee Bar in San Francisco. "When other people are in the zone, it helps you. It's better than most offices, where you are spread out."

Around him, more than a dozen other patrons gazed at laptops in the South of Market cafe. They sat at communal tables and a bar that wraps around one side of the upstairs room that is home base for many who would rather not be at, well, home.

Bay Area coffeehouses are not just purveyors of caffeine and carbohydrates, but also neighborhood centers, meeting and mingling spaces and now, increasingly, ad hoc offices. As the number of the unemployed, underemployed, self-employed and entrepreneurs by chance grows, so does the demand for seats at independent and chain coffeehouses that offer what's now just about the only essential in the work world - easy access to the Internet.

For owners - some whose stores flourished from the tech boom and crashed when it busted - the latest wave of business can be too much of a good thing. Their tables are full of customers nursing the same latte for four hours, placing owners in the delicate position of playing coffee cop. In the age of Yelp, Twitter and Foursquare, customers know which cafes tolerate long stays and which post signs, limit Internet time or give them the stink eye.

Many cafes are trying ways to keep regulars and walk-ins happy. One in the Mission covered electrical outlets so laptop users would leave after a few hours. Another in Pacific Heights allots Internet time according to the amount spent on food and drinks. A third, Coffee Cat in Scotts Valley (Santa Cruz County), revoked its free Internet access, prompting regulars to defect and rant online about what one calls a breach of "coffee shop etiquette."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/08/DDKR1B2GRN.DTL#ixzz0c3YEgGLr

[HereSince1628]

1. Need temperature sensing labels that change color

when your label turns color, it's time for you to make like Logan run for the door, or buy another round.

[Warpy]

10. Timers on the tables might help, too

to remind these folks they're renting the space and the access as well as buying overpriced coffee.

The miserable part is realizing this is the only social life people who were ejected from office jobs now have, since so many of them were completely invested in a work life, and that most of them can't afford much in the way of space rent.

They'd probably love to sit there guzzling multiple cups of gussied up coffees and noshing on wraps and pastries. They just can't afford it now.

Still, if they want the cafe to stay open, they need to find a way to limit their time. The timers could work.

[dkf]

2. Let them sit there all day.

I'm in and out and an empty store attracts no one

[dugaresa]

3. when i travel for business, I typically will buy 2-3 cups of coffee and some snacks

plus my one coworker and i typically end up at starbucks and i have to pay for wifi there.

[tammywammy]

4. When I ran a small coffee shop we had that problem

We had a few customers that would buy 1 cup of coffee and then proceed to take up space the rest of the day. One night we had a group of probably 12 16-18 year olds come in. It was a busy busy night and we had live music. Only 2 people out of the group even bought something and they were taking up space for our paying customers. After they'd been there almost an hour, I was the mean lady that told them they needed to buy something or move on and let our paying customers sit.

Edited to add: During the slower hours it's not so much a problem of people taking the space. But honestly, one less than $2 cup of coffee didn't help us pay the bills (when that $2 was spread out over 5 or 6 hours). During the breakfast/lunch rush is when you'd get tired of seeing these customers just basically take up space. I think for every 2 hours you spend there you need to buy something, whether it's another cup of coffee/tea or pastry. And even if they say free refills, don't buy one cup in the morning and get free refills all day, it should really just be "one free refill."

[Liberal_in_LA]

6. I recall reading that Dunkin Donuts type places designed the seats to be uncomfortable on purpose

to encourage people to keep moving.

As a teenager I worked at a fastfood place (one of the major ones). Management would grumble about the elderly who bought a pastry and coffee and sat for hours. But I noticed that these folks moved on before the lunch crowd so I had no problem with them sitting in an empty restaurant during nonrush hours. I sensed they didn't want to be there when it was really really crowded.

[KansDem]

8. "...Dunkin Donuts type places designed the seats to be uncomfortable on purpose"

I've heard the same thing, only not just about DD.

When I visited McD's in the 1970s, the restaurants then had these swing out seats attached to the tables. I had trouble getting in and out of them! And they were uncomfortable as all hell!

But I heard this is done on purpose in order to keep people moving through...

[Liberal_in_LA]

9. DD's had those slippery one piece curved seats. Those corporations are evil!

lol

[tammywammy]

12. We wouldn't be bothered by them during non-busy hours

But those teenagers came in during a really busy time. When only 2 out of a large group buy something, that doesn't cut it (I think I said that to them, when they tried to point out two had bought something). We also had a problem with large groups of teens that would sit out front for hours in the evenings. Most of them smoked and didn't have the decency to use the provided ashtrays. I would spend every night sweeping up their butts because they were so lazy. I gave them a talking to a few times, "Look don't trash this place up and buy something or please leave."

[arcadian]

14. It's also why fast food joints have obnoxious colors and horrible music.

So people don't want to hang around. Just shovel it down your gullet and get the fuck out is their attitude.

[conscious evolution]

18. Correct

The companies that build chairs and boothsd for restaraunts actually includes comfort time in how they build the seats.Many fastfood places have what are called twenty minute seats in order to facilitate turnover among eat-in guests.Places like Ruby Tuesdays and OG have one hour chairs.Higher end restaruants have two hour chairs.
Restaraunts do this so as to ensure that they can move as many customers through as they possible can without obviously rushing the customers out the door.

[NightWatcher]

5. I used to hang out at Panera Bread Co, getting refills of tea and surfing to find a job

it's called being a hungry student (now expanded to be called a hungry person)

Have any of these critics of hangers been to Europe? Shitloads of people simply just hangout all day long

[KansDem]

7. I've wondered about this when I visit such shops...

Even restaurants where someone will purchase a lunch-special, then sit and read for awhile following eating.

When I do something like this, which is rare (I don't have a laptop but will edit stories and musical compositions), I leave a substantial tip--say $10-$20--to offset whatever tips were lost with my tying up the table for a couple of hours. And I usually have more than one cup.

I tend to drink my coffee like I do my whiskey...

[Xithras]

11. The best solution I've seen...

...was a local coffee shop that printed an "access code" on your receipt. The more you spent, the more access you got (a dollar or two an hour, if I remember). The access is technically still free, as you're really spending that money on a latte, but the "free" is limited by what you spend.

If your time runs out, you simply have to go buy another coffee, and more free time comes with the purchase.

The problem is that it's a lot more complex to set up, and requires integration of your POS and WiFi systems, which can cost money and presents security problems if not done right. The owner of the shop told me that some company in San Jose was marketing it as a solution to "deadbeat drinkers", and set his store up as a model.

[tammywammy]

13. That's a perfect solution

I wonder how costly something like that is though.

[SmileyRose]

15. Probably cheaper than bankruptcy

but freeloaders will still find another place to freeload - until their aren't any left.

[tammywammy]

16. Well, you're right about that

:)

[Xithras]

17. He didn't know.

That's how I found out he was set up for free. As a computer software consultant, I was suprised to see that level of technology in a coffee shop.

The basic technology is the same one used in hotels to meter and bill Internet access, and the company who installed it apparently does the Internet access for hotels too. From a technical standpoint, I would guess that they merely tweaked the backend to allow variable length access times (most hotels sell their time in standard 24 hour allotments) and then tweaked the front end to require a code instead of a credit card number.

When I sat down and opened my laptop, I was redirected to a page that requested my access code. I punched it in, hit OK, and was forwarded to the page I had requested. I didn't stay long enough to run my time out, but my understanding is that you'd simply be redirected back to the code page when your time ran out.

I would guess that it's got to be fairly expensive though. Most places simply throw out a WiFi router and let everyone go at it. With this setup, you needed a PoS system that supported it, a wifi router that supported it, a gateway server, etc. It's probably out of reach of most smaller coffee shops.