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This is cool. Reminds me.. I have always liked the idea of opening a cafe (who hasn't !?) but I'd struggle with the modern behaviour of peeps sitting for hours
by padolsey 5y ago
This is cool. Reminds me.. I have always liked the idea of opening a cafe (who hasn't !?) but I'd struggle with the modern behaviour of peeps sitting for hours taking up a plug + wifi in exchange for ~£$4. Hugely uneconomical for independents. Good-faith customers aware of the economic burden of their behaviour are a VERY rare breed.. So I quite like (/ethically hate) the idea of creating scarcities in order to influence behaviour away from this norm. E.g. limited internet consumption, no wall sockets, pay-per-minute, etc. Thoughts?
- didip 5y agoI have been thinking of subscription only coffee shop. Members bring some kind of card to scan and enter. This way, members have a safe place to come in, work, and read whatever they want to read.
- emsixteen 5y agoJust don't have wifi.
- iso1631 5y agoTether off your phone. I rarely use public wifi, too much hassle. Don't have power though and I won't be around for long.
- ghaff 5y agoSeems like less of a problem these days. Most laptops will give you hours of use without charging. M1s and Chromebooks basically give you an entire day. And a fair number of people just work on their phones for a lot of purposes.
- Aeolun 5y agoYeah, have enough traffic on my phone that connecting to wifi that has hundreds of other people connected to it is generally a bad idea. If my network slows to a crawl, it’s always because I’ve accidentally connected to some public wifi network.
- ghaff 5y agoI suspect that would decrease your potential market significantly.
- emsixteen 5y agoIf people only come to your place for wifi then they're not the customers you want imo.
- aqme28 5y agoCharge enough for wifi or a seat that it's not a problem for you.
- closeparen 5y agoThere used to be a cafe like this near me in SF. Unfortunately the zoning board ruled that it was more like an office than a cafe, meaning not permitted in a retail space. Don’t do this unless you want to get shut down. This isn’t just “the fun police” either. Pre pandemic SF was very sensitive about tech workers/offices crowding out other elements of the city. Work-friendly cafes would be immensely popular, meaning they would take up a lot of retail that could otherwise have more “character.” Now with so much commercial and retail vacancy it’s less of a zero sum game. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972491
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- iso1631 5y agoThat's crazy. I sat in a mostly empty cafe for about 45 minutes last week waiting for a train, had a coffee and croissant and had I been there much longer I'd be orderign something else On the other hand in the old days you used to pay $x for 30 minutes of time on a computer. I don't see a problem with 30 minutes free with a coffee, then charging extra for time.
- quartz 5y agoWe have a shop near us with a "no laptops" policy, and another with laptop hours. This works pretty well from what I've seen.
- trzy 5y agoHistorically, cafes were social forums where people gathered for hours at a time to read and converse. Maximizing absolute profit by optimizing customer throughput is the modern take. But that’s not what cafes are for and so you should not feel bad for forcing owners to understand their business and optimize for both profitability and the cafe experience.
- bottled_poe 5y ago“Historically” is relevant how? The world moves on, cafes are no exception lmao.
- trzy 5y agoYou’re right, they’ve moved on from periodicals and discussion groups to laptop usage for hours at a time :)
- dustymcp 5y agoI worked at a cafe, it worked more like a family than a business, we all got food in the evening and had fun together, the restaurant was the main life, but one shouldnt underestimate the café when it was in a good day, alot of people enjoy just coming in and grabbing togo if its good, more than enough to make up for the hangarounds/workers. Also it seemed the more people who where actually there the more business it received.
- padolsey 5y agoI would love a return to that historic ideal, though it just wouldn't be economical on its own. It would end up being a loss-making add-on to some larger enterprise.. perhaps a bookstore or a locally funded community centre? I'm reminded of Ziferblat [1] and other similar "anti-cafes" [2]. They shut down their local one here though, apparently due to not being able to meet the cost of skyrocketing commercial rents. [1] https://www.ziferblat.co.uk/Coventry/discover https://www.ziferblat.co.uk/Coventry/discover [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-caf%C3%A9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-caf%C3%A9
- 5y ago
- bhc 5y agoThere is a cafe chain in Russia that charges by the minute but most drinks are free. They tried to expand to the U.K. in the mid-2010s, but their test cafes failed, and they pulled out after a few years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziferblat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziferblat
- jordanrobinson 5y agoThe one in Manchester is still here, just under a different name: https://oppidan-social.com/ https://oppidan-social.com/ It's quite reasonably priced actually, and a bit more co-working focused than your average coffee shop.
- vmception 5y ago4? Where! I’m fine that independent cafes charge like $12-$14 for anything now in places I go Price out other people doing less lucrative things that would be in the way. Bloggers, starry eyed dropshippers, enlightened failed dropshippers Writing books on dropshipping, people trying to start an online jewelry store. Its too bad this can include coffee drinkers as well. My M1 seems like it has infinite battery, I’ll tether if I have to
- PietKachelhout 5y agoThis [0] cafe in Berlin charges you by the hour. And the first drink is included. Worked really well for me when I was in Berlin. No subscription needed. [0] https://kleinmein.gr/en/coworking-space/ https://kleinmein.gr/en/coworking-space/
- nkantar 5y agoThis looks fantastic. Working remotely since the start of the pandemic, these days I'd love a sustainable option like that for 3 hours at a time once or twice per week.
- wintermutestwin 5y agoThis is brilliant! I wonder how they police it? Is it simply a limited time access to the internet? Important to note that the second feature they list is: "comfy seats." It seems that many coffee shops try to fight the over use problem with uncomfortable seating.
- netsharc 5y agoIn one I've been you can pick a totem (they're all in form of old pocket watches), and they note what time this totem got "checked out" of the reception, and what time it returns, and charge you for the minutes.
- egypturnash 5y agoOh that’s lovely.
- PietKachelhout 5y agoThey don't police it. It is an honesty system. I think limiting internet access is a pointless method because it is so easy to tether to your phone. And you don't have to work online to work there, you can also draw or read.
- LeanderK 5y agocharge for the wifi after 1h?
- mrfusion 5y agoCould you make each purchase include an hour of wifi? It wouldn’t be too hard to set up and I don’t think people would mind. Or after an hour keep providing wifi but put up a guilt screen explaining that you have costs etc.
- bombcar 5y agoI get annoyed enough having to find the wifi password, having to do a monkey dance every hour would be more annoying still. I think the reality of the situation is that it's WAY less of a problem than people make it out to be; most every coffee shop I've ever been in has been mostly empty.
- jimkleiber 5y agoHaha, I thought maybe turn the whole cafe into a faraday cage (don't know if that is possible) so that no phones or internet work.
- bottled_poe 5y agoInteresting idea, but probably illegal in most places unfortunately.
- xeromal 5y agoNot necessarily. Loads of buildings are faraday cages by accident. I know my old school gym completely blocked cell signal due to how it was built
- bombcar 5y agoMany big-box stores effectively block most if not all cell signal; you might not notice because Home Depot provides free wifi.
- ascar 5y agoWhat kind of law would prohibit you to block out cell signal in your own building?
- 5y ago
- duxup 5y agoThe few times I've had my home internet drop out and I needed a few hours of wi-fi to get work done I realized the local cafes were the same people there sometimes taking all the spaces. I usually got lunch and etc too considering I was taking up the shop's space for a few hours... but I was one of the few who did that. Maybe there needs to be an office space + cubicle + coffee shop rental thing ... but I'm not sure you could charge enough to justify it / folks would probably save money and just go camp at a coffee shop. It's an interesting dynamic.
- nicoburns 5y ago> Maybe there needs to be an office space + cubicle + coffee shop rental thing This is essentially what co-working spaces like WeWork are. But they are quite expensive which is probably why a lot of people continue to use coffee shops (environment and location of coffee shop may also be preferable)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- markus_zhang 5y agoI'm thinking instead of cafe maybe a place that one can rent a small, dark and quiet room at relatively flat price. Say any coffee for the first hour and then $2 per hour. Additional basic Coffee is free but food needs $$$. Does it make any financial sense? I guess no? Is there a way for the customer to claim the expense as sort of WFH expense?
- swalls 5y agoIt's not exactly the same, but in Japan a few capsule net cafes opened up that sound similar to what you're talking about: https://youtu.be/HkNzjvueJm8 https://youtu.be/HkNzjvueJm8
- markus_zhang 5y agoThanks that's almost what exactly I want. I don't need the computer though so that's a difference. I also want chairs. But that's what I have in mind.
- zhte415 5y agoA space where you can work? Potentially with spaces with others. With break out spaces for working with others, with a few perks thrown in? Call it WeWork?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ascar 5y agoIsn't it fair for restaurants to ask you to clear the table if you haven't ordered anything for a while and they need the space for new customers? Why shouldn't cafés do they same?
- bentcorner 5y ago> they need the space for new customers? I think this is an important point. I occasionally work in a Panera near me during the weekday (I usually order a soup or sandwich) and I don't feel bad about taking up a seat for an hour or two since the place is practically empty, and would be a little irked if someone asked me to order something at that point. I would feel bad and wouldn't mind at all with leaving or ordering something more frequently if I wanted to do the same thing on a Sunday afternoon since the place is often very busy. Some signage similar in tone to what I see with metro buses and wheelchair seats seem appropriate (roughly worded as "it's perfectly fine to sit here, but if you see someone who needs this spot, you should give it up").
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cush 5y agoOne approach is to incentivize customers toward doing what you want
- supertofu 5y agoWe need more coworking spaces with cafes. Cafés weren't designed to be coworking spaces.
- frizkyK 5y agoI would love the idea of buying something every hour or so. In return get a code that you can use to extend the WiFi availability. Or just straight-up pay via your laptop for X amount of WiFi hours which allows you to sit in the coffee shop.
- james_pm 5y agoUncomfortable chairs is how fast food restaurants handle this. If you make the seating comfortable, people will stay longer. Make it less comfortable (or uncomfortable) and people will move on after a shorter period of time.
- edouard-harris 5y agoThis is going to depend a lot on location. Coffee chains are able to support this sort of behavior because the many customers that drop $4 in one minute on their morning commute, are subsidizing the few customers that pay $4 for six hours of seating and wifi. Assuming you open your cafe on a viable commuter path, you can take advantage of this subsidy and your economics can work out. You can improve your economics even further with the tactics a lot of cafes already to nudge behavior at the margin, some of which you've already noticed (e.g., less-than-stellar wifi, thermostat at slightly cold temperature, limited actual seating space, only 1-2 customer-accessible wall sockets, etc.). On the question of charging-by-the-minute: the marginal profit you can earn on coffee is higher than marginal profit you can earn on real estate. That's why Starbucks (which sells coffee and gives away real estate) is a better business than WeWork (which sells real estate and gives away coffee). Therefore instead of charging by the minute, you might consider raising your coffee prices and/or controlling the average amount of real estate you're giving away per unit of coffee sold.
- mongol 5y agoBuy more coffee - get more minutes?
- s3233323 5y ago
- clairity 5y agomost folks here are overthinking/armchairing the problem. coffee shop owners have their economics figured out or they wouldn't stay in business. cafes (like the dozens near me) are perfectly capable of sustaining their business with a blend of folks grabbing coffee to go and others sitting for hours. you don't need to institute limits, subscriptions, nudges, or any other customer-hostile action. just price well, and provide value beyond your costs. one pro-customer option is providing food (beyond pastries) for the lingerers, which adds some marginal cost but adds significant marginal revenue.
- bko 5y agoI think you're armchairing the problem by stating coffee shops exist therefore there is no problem. Many coffee shops do impose user hostile actions like loud music, small uncomfortable seating, etc. The others are big chains that have efficiencies (e.g. lower prices, more efficient workforce, better analytics) that are not available to smaller shops. In most competitive markets you cannot compete (i.e. not lose money) when you have costs that a competitor does not have the bear. For instance, if 20% of your customers are money losers, a competitor can cut those customers out and make a higher return. Everything gets priced in. So that means that person can charge X% less for coffee, or pay X% more for real estate, or have better coffee or better service etc. Ignoring the trade off doesn't make it go away
- dfxm12 5y agopeeps sitting for hours taking up a plug + wifi in exchange for ~£$4. Hugely uneconomical for independents. It's only uneconomical if enough potential customers leave because they can't sit down or I guess if they use a ton of power. Business Internet is not usage based, right? and you're buying that anyway... One place near me instituted a "co working packages" which you were expected to pay a certain fee and that got you drinks, maybe a pastry and let you sit down for some amount of time. I would go in there for a pastry from time to time and the place sometimes had one or two people on laptops in there, and had plenty of seats both before and after having this co-working policy. It's not a surprise, there are tons of cafes in walking distance and this was the only one that cared about charging people to sit there. They were all pretty similarly not at capacity regardless of "scarcities". Then there's the cost of enforcement - what happens if someone causes a scene and doesn't want to leave? You have to pay staff for that that you might not have to otherwise. Same with software tracking minutes of wifi used.
- synicalx 5y ago> Business Internet is not usage based You'd think that's the case but really, it depends. It depends on what connection type you have, what country you're in, and how remote you are or aren't. Business grade fibre in a big city? Probably not going to be metered and you'll have bandwidth to spare. ADSL in the middle of nowhere? Almost certainly going to be metered and you'll have very little bandwidth.
- gernb 5y agoSF Used to (still does?) have the Workshop Cafe that charged by the hour. It was usually packed! I think they shutdown during COVID and have not re-opened (yet?) https://www.workshopcafe.com/ https://www.workshopcafe.com/
- comprev 5y agoHave a system by which each coffee comes with a unique code on the receipt. This code grants you 1hr on the WiFi before terminating your session. Present a screen which provides a payment gateway to buy more time - or for less money - buy another drink. I've been to cafes before which let you "rent" a security lock for laptops and all the tables had a loop which they could be attached too. In many cafes I've seen signs saying "no tablets/laptops at the weekend" to make space for customers who want to socialise.
- jlokier 5y ago> Have a system by which each coffee comes with a unique code on the receipt. This code grants you 1hr on the WiFi before terminating your session. I went to a place like that a few years ago. I could never comfortably finish my drink within the time limit, so I'd get cut off wifi while still drinking, even if I was just browsing to relax, not spending hours. Perhaps it worked for them: I stopped going there and taking up seating. Then again I stopped going there to buy anything as well. The internet time limit was an improvement over their previous policy, of playing music way too loud, which staff told me was deliberate. That didn't actually push people away who had laptops - people like me wore earplugs with noise cancelling headphones over the top, to bring the awful sound down to bearable levels. But it stopped people who came in for a chat with friends from chatting.
- powersnail 5y agoI've asked some cafe owners this question, and they just answered, nah, stay as long as you want; most customers never sit down anyway.
- andi999 5y agoDont forget, nobody enters an empty cafe, so a few ppl. with laptops signaling the place is ok and open during opening hours might even be beneficial.
- bogwog 5y agoI used to think the same thing until I realized that I can't remember the last time I actually sat down in a coffee shop to drink coffee. I always buy it to go, and I imagine the vast majority of people do that too.
- atmosx 5y agoMaybe going for a co-working space is better on your case.
- wildmanx 5y agoNot sure this is a problem. I work a lot from cafes and being the lazy guy I am, I've a selection of 3 places that I go to regularly. The times I work are not their peak hours, so I'm not taking a seat from anybody, but I'm there a lot. Like, 3-4 days a week. I drink coffee, buy some cake, occasionally some wrap for lunch .. by now I've dumped 4-figures on each of my regular places. If I walk by places that I don't frequent regularly -- they also have empty seats, but they don't have those dollars in their pockets that I left at their competition. Why do I not go there? They are not as comfy/cozy. Less comfy chairs, unpleasant lighting, no good coffee, no good cake. Some of those certainly on purpose to repel customers like me. They certainly succeeded at that, but obviously didn't get my money in return either. Winning me as a regular customer is a big win (that's what I tell myself, at least).
- paxys 5y agoThe vast majority of a coffee shop's business happens during the morning rush. If you can't be profitable just from that, the small trickle of customers for the rest of the day isn't going to make a difference to your overall finances, whether they are staying at the table for 1 hour or 4. This is why most coffee shops don't really care about this problem.
- mtalantikite 5y agoThere's a coffee chain here in Brooklyn [1] that has been spreading very quickly who has targeted opening in small spaces, or as short term pop-ups inside other spaces, without much (or any) seating. This probably limits those behaviors you're talking about. They've raised close to $70 million for some reason [2][3]. There's a couple a few blocks from me but I've never tried them, as I just make coffee with an aeropress at home. When I was younger I'd hang out at coffee shops and pretend to be getting work done, but not so much as an adult. [1] https://www.blankstreet.com/ https://www.blankstreet.com/ [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasyu/2021/10/13/blank-street-coffees-25-million-raise-shows-what-big-institutions-want-from-food-service-quality-and-convenience/?sh=7f75924166ed https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasyu/2021/10/13/blank-stre... [3] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blank-street https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blank-street
- aylmao 5y agoI’ve always liked the idea of opening a café too. My thoughts on the matter are related to this; I think the biggest stressor for me would be paying rent so if I ever do I’d like to own the location. I guess that’s hard in the USA where commercial and residential spaces are so strictly kept separate and far away from each other. Where I’m from it’s not rare for a business to be in a place that used to be (or still is) someone’s home. This includes one of my favorite cafes (they make fantastic food) which seems to be the owner’s home lawn and first floor. I don’t know the exact economics of this, but I can imagine not paying rent means this sort of customer stops being an existential threat and just becomes a nuisance if you want to maximize profits. EDIT: do note I'm sharing this from the perspective of someone who would set up a café "for fun" and to "keep busy" when retired or something, not as someone who would want to necessarily set up a while operation with employees or live off of this café.
- mhitza 5y agoI can't find the one research study I wanted to link to now, but with a search on Google Scholar you'll find papers on this topic. The one I wanted to link to raised up the same concerns from coffee shop owners, and those that embraced a coffee shop/coworking space model, had their plugs + comfy chairs in the back where they could also offer a less noisy environment (without an actual separating wall or anything like that). If I recall correctly they also had one-day type of passes that included a couple of drinks/snacks. That specific paper was about this model during the pandemic period, a followup study would be interesting now once everything is opened/opening up. The inverse of this is that you want to have "stiff" chairs if you don't want people to linger for too long when they get a coffee.
- jrib 5y agoIf there are empty seats, I don't feel guilty at all. I'll usually get up multiple times to order something. And the atmosphere of feeling welcomed makes me come back every week.
- thisisit 5y agoSome cafes near me will nudge people to buy something if they have been there for hours. While some like that people working there makes them look busy so they are okay with it. So, I guess this might or might be a burden. It depends completely on the cafe.
- cercatrova 5y agoThe more that a coffee shop is customer-hostile, the less I'll visit it, even if I were to get something to go. I don't want to support businesses who don't want to support me.
- Melting_Harps 5y ago> This is cool. Reminds me.. I have always liked the idea of opening a cafe (who hasn't !?) but I'd struggle with the modern behaviour of peeps sitting for hours taking up a plug You'd have done well in Budapest at one time [0]. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_235-hSeKFI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_235-hSeKFI
- jclos 5y agoA few things that come to mind from having worked in many coffees in a few countries where those were implemented would be to institute an off-peak/peak time policy where people are asked not to work during peak time (e.g. lunch), have some sort of subscription model which comes with a faster wifi and X drinks a month.