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?
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This 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.
most 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.
> only 1-2 customer-accessible wall sockets,
Before I got an M1 laptop, this was a real issue for me. Now, it really doesn't matter. My battery will easily last the entire time I am in the cafe without really thinking about it.
A busy cafe with seated people also psychologically has an impact on people just stopping in for takeout.
Buy more coffee - get more minutes?
This [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.
This 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.
This 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.
Isn'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?
> 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").
Historically, 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.
I 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 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-caf%C3%A9
There'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/
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasyu/2021/10/13/blank-stre...
peeps 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.
We have a shop near us with a "no laptops" policy, and another with laptop hours. This works pretty well from what I've seen.
That'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.
We need more coworking spaces with cafes. Cafés weren't designed to be coworking spaces.
The 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.
Uncomfortable 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.
I’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.
There 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.
Haha, 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.
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.
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.
The 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.
Not 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).
I'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?
I 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.
4? 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
A 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.
I've asked some cafe owners this question, and they just answered, nah, stay as long as you want; most customers never sit down anyway.
> 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].
SF 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?)
Some 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.
I 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.
I 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.
Could 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.
The 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.
If 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.
I 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.
Dont 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.
Charge enough for wifi or a seat that it's not a problem for you.
Just don't have wifi.
One approach is to incentivize customers toward doing what you want
Maybe going for a co-working space is better on your case.
charge for the wifi after 1h?