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> Great atmosphere encourages people to linger on that $5 ticket for hours, which is a black hole for money... This is a problem that restaurants and other pla

> Great atmosphere encourages people to linger on that $5 ticket for hours, which is a black hole for money... This is a problem that restaurants and other places solved a long time ago. I don't get why coffee shops never seem to do this: train your staff to make the rounds when they're not busy. Stop by any table with an empty cup, pick it up quietly, smile, gently ask the customer if they'd like anything else. (Don't nag or harangue the customer or ask the same one more than once an hour.) Coffee shops have a problem with customers coming in and making themselves at home because they aren't being run like a business: there's very little staff-customer interaction. People come in, order (maybe), find a corner, and park there on the wifi for two hours. Shops respond to this by making customers come up to the counter to get a wep key, but that's the wrong way to do it. Instead, invite people in, invite them to stay, and ask them once in a while if you can bring them anything. And as an added bonus, your staff will make a little extra in tips, too.

nopassrecover 16y ago
You make sense, but the attraction at staying in a coffee shop for me (and often paying the inflated prices) is in treating it like a library. In any business if a salesperson comes past more than once asking if I've found what I want yet I'm pretty tempted to leave. That's probably the desired result here but I'd pretty quickly find an alternate coffee shop that didn't bug me at all.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  Yeah, that's the least desirable of the outcomes, but it's still not a bad deal for the business. You have to figure that there will be some customers that want to be able to come in and basically rent space (plus, usually, a restroom and wifi) from the business for a couple of hours for the price of a cup of coffee. Although there's nothing really wrong with a customer wanting that, it's not a good deal for the business and they have no motivation to support it. That's why the interaction from the wait staff should be really low-key. If the customer really isn't OK with being offered something once an hour or so, then that's just not a good customer for the shop. (My local co-working space charges $20 per day for anyone looking for a place to work; I use that as a yardstick for what's reasonable at a coffee shop. If I'm going to be there for more than a couple of hours, then I'm treating it as a co-working space and I owe them $20 of revenue.) Most other people find it fair and convenient to get another cup of coffee or other treat delivered to them, and regard it as good service. I suppose that if the shop thinks there are a large enough number of people in their area that are just looking for a place to work, and are willing to pay for it, but just don't want to be bothered at all, then they could offer something like a "day pass" -- $10 for camping out for more than a couple of hours without being interrupted by the staff, plus a discount on their coffee or other products. But I'm not sure that would have enough takers to be worth it.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    You say, My local co-working space charges $20 per day for anyone looking for a place to work; I use that as a yardstick for what's reasonable at a coffee shop. This logic is totally broken. Your co-working space has a different cost structure than the coffee shop. In particular: * Your co-working space doesn't need to factor in the cost of baristas and managers into the value of a table/hour. * Your co-working space isn't set up in a super-expensive retail property, so the inherent value of a table/hour their is lower. You've been underpaying your coffee shop.
    - thaumaturgy 16y ago
      There's a limit to how much of a business's problems the customer should have to consider. I don't think very much about the co-working space's costs (are they spending more on marketing? What about faster internet? Building maintenance?), and I'm not thinking much about the coffee shop's costs. I'm just starting with what a particular thing would cost me elsewhere, and offering to pay that to someone else. Also, I'm trying to avoid going into specifics because they won't help us understand why coffee shops should work on their customer interaction, but I can assure you that our local co-working space has much higher monthly expenses than any of our coffee shops.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        I agree. I'm being facetious. It's not your problem that the coffee shop is letting you sit there and cost them money; they should stop letting you!
    - kscaldef 16y ago
      Your coffee shop doesn't have: phones, copiers, fax machines, professionally-managed high-bandwidth internet, copious power outlets, comfortable workstations, secure entry, indoor bike storage, whiteboards, etc. How about we call it a toss-up?
      - tptacek 16y ago
        I have an office with phones, copiers, fax machines, high-bandwidth internet, comfortable workstations, power, secure entry, and whiteboards. We have about 10 people working out of it. I have a very good idea of what these things cost. On the first floor of my building is a coffee shop. It pays more than 3x per rentable square foot than we do. Retail space is priced differently from office space. Attractive retail space is far more expensive than good office space. No, I don't think phones and Internet makes it a toss-up. I think you're way off.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Use the library. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758722
tptacek 16y ago
Most coffee shops aren't staffed for table service. Even when it's quiet, customers are arriving in dribs and drabs. Payroll is their largest expense; adding a headcount is probably untenable. This also assumes that if you gently asked a "customer" if they wanted another cup of coffee that they would buy. Customers interpret this signal in restaurants because there are social cues and a meal progression. When you get done with dessert, there's an expectation that you're going to clear out and free up your 4-top for someone else. Clearly, some people have developed different expectations about coffee shop tables.
- thaumaturgy 16y ago
  > Most coffee shops aren't staffed for table service. That's part of the point. If the coffee shop is so busy that the staff can't sweep the relatively small space, then they have no need to bother anyone to buy more. The bulk of my experience though, in both large cities and small towns, is that the staff spends plenty of time just hanging out. > Customers interpret this signal in restaurants because there are social cues... And those social cues are only social cues because restaurants train their wait staff to visit with the customers on a regular basis. The coffee shops are the only ones that don't seem to know this about the industry; if they started doing it, customers would learn the cues PDQ. (My pet theory for this is that coffee shops aren't run by restaurateurs; they're run by hobbyists, people like the article's author.)

nopassrecover 16y ago

You make sense, but the attraction at staying in a coffee shop for me (and often paying the inflated prices) is in treating it like a library. In any business if a salesperson comes past more than once asking if I've found what I want yet I'm pretty tempted to leave. That's probably the desired result here but I'd pretty quickly find an alternate coffee shop that didn't bug me at all.

thaumaturgy 16y ago
Yeah, that's the least desirable of the outcomes, but it's still not a bad deal for the business. You have to figure that there will be some customers that want to be able to come in and basically rent space (plus, usually, a restroom and wifi) from the business for a couple of hours for the price of a cup of coffee. Although there's nothing really wrong with a customer wanting that, it's not a good deal for the business and they have no motivation to support it. That's why the interaction from the wait staff should be really low-key. If the customer really isn't OK with being offered something once an hour or so, then that's just not a good customer for the shop. (My local co-working space charges $20 per day for anyone looking for a place to work; I use that as a yardstick for what's reasonable at a coffee shop. If I'm going to be there for more than a couple of hours, then I'm treating it as a co-working space and I owe them $20 of revenue.) Most other people find it fair and convenient to get another cup of coffee or other treat delivered to them, and regard it as good service. I suppose that if the shop thinks there are a large enough number of people in their area that are just looking for a place to work, and are willing to pay for it, but just don't want to be bothered at all, then they could offer something like a "day pass" -- $10 for camping out for more than a couple of hours without being interrupted by the staff, plus a discount on their coffee or other products. But I'm not sure that would have enough takers to be worth it.
- tptacek 16y ago
  You say, My local co-working space charges $20 per day for anyone looking for a place to work; I use that as a yardstick for what's reasonable at a coffee shop. This logic is totally broken. Your co-working space has a different cost structure than the coffee shop. In particular: * Your co-working space doesn't need to factor in the cost of baristas and managers into the value of a table/hour. * Your co-working space isn't set up in a super-expensive retail property, so the inherent value of a table/hour their is lower. You've been underpaying your coffee shop.
  - thaumaturgy 16y ago
    There's a limit to how much of a business's problems the customer should have to consider. I don't think very much about the co-working space's costs (are they spending more on marketing? What about faster internet? Building maintenance?), and I'm not thinking much about the coffee shop's costs. I'm just starting with what a particular thing would cost me elsewhere, and offering to pay that to someone else. Also, I'm trying to avoid going into specifics because they won't help us understand why coffee shops should work on their customer interaction, but I can assure you that our local co-working space has much higher monthly expenses than any of our coffee shops.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      I agree. I'm being facetious. It's not your problem that the coffee shop is letting you sit there and cost them money; they should stop letting you!
  - kscaldef 16y ago
    Your coffee shop doesn't have: phones, copiers, fax machines, professionally-managed high-bandwidth internet, copious power outlets, comfortable workstations, secure entry, indoor bike storage, whiteboards, etc. How about we call it a toss-up?
    - tptacek 16y ago
      I have an office with phones, copiers, fax machines, high-bandwidth internet, comfortable workstations, power, secure entry, and whiteboards. We have about 10 people working out of it. I have a very good idea of what these things cost. On the first floor of my building is a coffee shop. It pays more than 3x per rentable square foot than we do. Retail space is priced differently from office space. Attractive retail space is far more expensive than good office space. No, I don't think phones and Internet makes it a toss-up. I think you're way off.
tptacek 16y ago
Use the library. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758722 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758722

tptacek 16y ago

Most coffee shops aren't staffed for table service. Even when it's quiet, customers are arriving in dribs and drabs. Payroll is their largest expense; adding a headcount is probably untenable. This also assumes that if you gently asked a "customer" if they wanted another cup of coffee that they would buy. Customers interpret this signal in restaurants because there are social cues and a meal progression. When you get done with dessert, there's an expectation that you're going to clear out and free up your 4-top for someone else. Clearly, some people have developed different expectations about coffee shop tables.

thaumaturgy 16y ago
> Most coffee shops aren't staffed for table service. That's part of the point. If the coffee shop is so busy that the staff can't sweep the relatively small space, then they have no need to bother anyone to buy more. The bulk of my experience though, in both large cities and small towns, is that the staff spends plenty of time just hanging out. > Customers interpret this signal in restaurants because there are social cues... And those social cues are only social cues because restaurants train their wait staff to visit with the customers on a regular basis. The coffee shops are the only ones that don't seem to know this about the industry; if they started doing it, customers would learn the cues PDQ. (My pet theory for this is that coffee shops aren't run by restaurateurs; they're run by hobbyists, people like the article's author.)