Slashdot Mirror
Panera Bread Is The Largest Provider Of Free WiFi
ayb11 writes "According to this article, the Panera Bread chain of Bakery/Cafes (think Starbucks that bakes their own bread) is the largest provider of free WiFi in the US. Their web site says, " There are currently 573 Wi-Fi enabled Panera Bread bakery-cafes, from California to Virginia. More are added every day." (Even my retired dad takes his barely-used laptop over there so he can get free refills on coffee.) Their full list of hotspots is here."
Offering free wifi costs them a lot of dough.
"uuuugghhh need more bran"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If only they served alcohol.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
It's just factored into the prices. Panera is good but pretty pricey. I doubt they would let someone who doesn't order anything just sit in their and use the internet for a prolonged period of time. It's a resturant, not a coffee shop.
So their bread is overpriced and burnt but served by attractive female bakers so you keep coming back?
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
I've used the local one more than once. Only thing I've noticed is that it's sometimes fairly laggy even when there aren't more than one or two people on them.
:)
And the sandwiches are pretty good, too. Strong coffee also
Companies act like it is a cripling cost, but what $60/month for cable, when customers will use this feature if you have it, it will even draw people to your store. Giving it away for free should bring them more people one would think.
but then again starbucks has such a big customer base that those people don't care what they pay for WiFi as long as they get their mocacappachino that costs $8
can i eat it?....please!
They are still called The St. Louis Bread Company here in St. Louis
Panera's became my home office for 3 months last year. Every day, constant free coffee refills, and plenty of lunch-crowd eye-candy from the local office complex.
Course, there was that time when someone sniffed/watched-over-my-shoulder while I was paying my bills and the next day I had to dispute a bunch of charges... but for just hanging out, a great place.
Had hoped they could force T-Mobile to be more competitive, but this isnt something new and last I looked Starbucks still had ridiculous fees.
Wichita, KS has @ least 3 Panera Locations, all relatively new, yet no wifi locations listed. It seems to me they they have no excuse if they're charging $5 for a mocachino :-/
I don't think it's unreasonable for businesses to charge for this, but it sure doesn't make a lot of sense to me when many are pushing "subscription" models to their customers.
Went last night to Barnes and Noble and noticed they had a "Wi-Fi" sign. So I figured this is great, I hang around look at some books and catch up on my email, but lo and behold you have to pay for a 19.99 monthly (1-year min) subscription fee! Why would I pay for ISP accesses that is so limited?
Yeah, they have a 2 hour $4 accesses, but this doesn't make much sense to me. The real attraction here is that if you want people to hang around your store, just offere it up for free, or charge a very minimal amount for usage that day (not for time).
- sigs are for wimps.
Call me names if you will, but sometimes it's the free stuff that can make you the most money.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
Has anyone moved next door to a hotspot just to get free access?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
At their Strip location!
> I doubt they would let someone who doesn't order anything just sit in there
What do you mean by "let". The Panera in my town is too big without enough staff to keep track of who's sitting there and who's just finished with his sandwich.
Then again, how long are you going to sit somewhere online without a cup of coffee? Especially if they have free refills?
But, in my experience, the Kroger has better pastries than Panera... The sandwiches are fancy, though. and tasty. Their breads are nice, but have that "Came to the bakery frozen" flavor.
Mmmm... Panera.... [droool]....
Best. Shortbread. Cookies. Ever.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I live quite close to a Panera Bread, and a directional antenna makes an easy way for me to get internet access without actually going into the café. I simply sit in the car somewhere in the parking lot and aim my directional antenna directly at the establishment. There are several businesses in the same strip mall - it would be easy for them to save on buying their own internet access.
--
Dogs are annoying. Go ECFA.
That list is horribly incomplete. I've been to four Paneras in Florida that have Wi-Fi and aren't on that list.
Vote Jeff Seeman for Congress in 2006. Regala turned a blind eye to his constitutents.
I listened to those guys all the time growing up. Shame about their guitarist.
Now whats this about bread?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Cool. I was thinking about going there tonight to try it out.
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
probably has more spots or they will soon.
Frankly it seems to me there ought to be free wifi in :
libraries, shopping malls, hotels, pretty much _anyplace_ that wants to attract foot traffic.
Personally I think eventually free wifi will be as important a piece of infrastructure as free roads. It wouldn't cost that much to unwire the whole country.
are you so anti-social that you can't bear to face human beings in a cafe? You sit in your car in the parking lot?
What a pathetic life you lead.
I find their food reasonable and reasonably priced, and they given free refills on the soda. Thus, I'm off to my local Panera whenever I need to download system upgrades... I get up early on weekends anyway, and would go w/o the WiFi - it's merely a big plus for me.
I've seen a number of laptop's there some days. It's also good to know where I can get both food and WiFi when on the road. It's like A/C was years ago, a cost of doing business if you wanted people in your store.
How fast?
Know of any other free hotspots in the Canton area?
Hear that? That's the sound of you not getting the joke.
I used a Panera Bread hotspot last weekend to test my employer's new VPN client software. Needed an environment different from my home to isolate a problem.
Two cups of "Colombian Supremo Reserva del Patrón" later, well, I hadn't solved the problem, but I was certainly focused on it.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
The new location out in Valencia, CA hands out those pager devices that go off when your food is ready. So no screaming.
Already at this location, I see people camped out with laptops. And it's surrounded by a residential zone... It would not take too much engineering to rig an antenna...
Note to Panera internet provider: Safari is your friend...
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
In the metro detroit area there are actually quite a few bars with free wifi. I could see how it targets the working lunch crowd around here.
Evolution or ID?
I worked at Panera for a year and the location I worked at had free WiFi. As a result, we had our fair share of business-suit men and tea-sipping hippies who would bring in their laptops and just laugh the day away with their free intorweb access.
It seemed to me that the laptop people were always the ones buying a single cup of coffee or just a soda, rather than a whole meal. This leads me to believe that frequent Internet users are more intelligent than non-frequent Internet users, because who the fuck would buy food from Panera?
www.kiwilyrics.com - a wiki for lyrics
None that I've been to in SE Michigan.
-- Boycott Shell
Panera is a St. Louis based company, yet there are no Paneras in the entire city. There, are, however, a few dozen St. Louis Bread Companies. St. Louis Bread Co. is the original name of the chain, but Panera is the name that they decided to expand nationally under. Other than the name, though, pretty much everything else is the same.
I live a couple blocks from the HQ and when I was new to the area, I walked into their offices thinking I'd order a sandwich...the secretary pointed across the street where their closest restaurant is located... Their operation in St. Louis is pretty tight (and called St. Louis Bread Co...we St. Louisans are rather provincial) but I was shocked a while ago when I noticed brochures for their wi-fi access and was very impressed. I almost bought a wi-fi enabled PDA (I was in the market for one at the time) hoping to frequent Bread Co... If you go to their store near Washingtion U. in the Loop, laptop/pda usage there is high and basically, they've nailed it: it's a great way to draw in the young professional/student crowd.
I've visited five different locations and never had the same experience. Generally the service is fast enough that people hover near the pick-up spot and the service people just say a name/number without using the microphone. Occasionally they'll use the PA when someone has gone off to the bathroom, but it's uncommon.
It seems to me the right way to do this is to put a one time password on each reciept over $n. I run the authentication mechanism at the university where I work and such a mechanism would be trivial to implement.
My main concern about running large wireless networks is that individuals with virus / worm infected systems can suck up all the available bandwidth pretty easily. The only way to deal with this is to bounce them off the network and the kind way to do that is to put a message on their screen that says "your computer has a virus. Please remove it before you use this network."
I was in Orlando last month and I used the free wifi while watching the 'Arabian Nights' horsey spectacular (by the way the show sucked BIG TIME, actually - v-e-r-y cheesy). Mind you, I don't think they actually knew they were offering free wifi access - but, hey, have PDA - will sniff!
Oh, and as a good tourist I did go to their Web feedback form and let them know that they needed to fix their wireless security so don't blame me if you go there and can't get a connection!
AT&ROFLMAO
Not since the great Dobbs spoke at the Indianapolis Convention Center last week have I seen such effective wisdom.
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=13881
Got it out of trolltalk. Heh.
I thought "linksys" was the largest provider of free WiFi in the world...
I wonder when the WiFi spec will include transparent roaming by default. I'd have some kind of unique issuer::id certificate, and a set of "rate plans" I'd be willing to accept (eg. "$0.01:MB", or "$0.05:minute 11AM-6PM; $0.02:minute 6PM-11AM"). I might have a whole keyring of certificates, some of which are per-franchise, like Panera Bread, but the most successful of which are aggregations. Like Cirrus or NYCE login networks for ATMs. Then people could fill in hotspot gaps with their own hotspots, financing their investment, even if the hotspot was for their own ongoing use. And the difference between hotspots and continuous coverage would totally change mobile computing.
There's already a spec for GSM, UMA, but where's the actual tech and businesses for just WiFi, which could have more accurate market economics?
--
make install -not war
...I stopped thinking "WTF is Pantera Bread?"
- the place is trendy/upscale, and the prices reflect that. The people behind the counter were even a little snooty... two of them were having a little cat fight behind the counter once. Anyway, I looked VERY out of place when I whipped out my laptop and started loading geeky apps to try to figure out why I couldn't connect.
- secondly, their WiFi didn't actually work. They had some problem in the "back room". The guy at the counter gave me an 800 number to call, and the guy on the line said he'd try to reset some things. After several tries of this (at $7.00 per try, though the sandwiches were better than average I guess), it still wasn't working. The guy behind said they had printed brochures on the wifi coming eventually. He just generally gave me the impression that nobody tried to actually use it.
(before you reply: I was able to connect to the access point, get an IP and DNS, and it would respond to some of my packets, but I could never get the DNS server to respond. Also, this was in a pretty populated area in a northern suburb of chicago, so it's not as if there weren't wifiers around)Wifi at a Coffee shop... Has there ever been a more compelling reason to push for an implementation of RFC2324?
I swear, I think I am the only one who uses the free Wifi at the Panera Bread at the location on Troy Rd in Troy, NY. I think the employees in the store now reconize me when I come in as the "guy with the white laptop who orders the Pepperblue Steak sandwich".
They enforce content filtering on the border of their access points, so while the access may be free, you may not have complete access to the "Intarweb." I was in a rush so I didn't bother looking to see how it could be circumvented, but likely you could make your own secured proxy as long as it encrypts the stream, I think the firewall also seizes on plaintext content that it recognizes as "bad."
It would be interesting to see how a LAN party would kill the wireless spectrum on the local network. As a bonus, you could chat up the cute redhead using her PowerBook if she was using iChat AV/Rendezvous.
They make great sandwiches, soup, and bagels as well. Locally they operate as St Louis Bread Company, and are one of my favorite places to eat.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Not only did they respond, but they actually left me on the list as they kept hitting reply-all and I got to hear all the details about the progress of the mall's wiring that was holding them back (they told me they had to wait for work being done on the mall).
The service was actually activated months before they told me that it would. I've used it several times since then. Very nice! Now if I could only bring myself to take up a table for 3 hours while enjoying a single bagel...
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Wow, now what are the odds I would see this right when I was wondering if the one on The Strip has wi-fi.... ...I think I know where I will be hanging out much more often...
It's rather more of a "press release". The little blurb at the end is pretty much of a giveaway. Go ahead and RTFPR, but don't expect too much of it.
Floating face-down in a river of regret...and thoughts of you...
The last time I was in Panera Bread, there was a young 20-something female customer with a shirt that said "I (Heart) Nerds." She was pretty good looking, and not just because of the shirt.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Their food prices are comptetitive and the place is comfortable. The wifi service at my local shop is blazing fast. The signal is from the unprotected dollar store next door, but they don't seem to mind too much.
I work about 2 miles from a Panera in Atlanta adjacent to Emory University. The Panera is within walking distance from the university. Let me be the first to say that free WiFi and a nearby college student population pretty much guarantee that you will be in a line of 30-40 college kids carrying various WiFi-enabled laptops.
Thankfully, many of the college girls wear their PJs to class and lunch, so it makes the line seem a little shorter. Ahhh..."hot buttered buns at Panera." Oh shit! Who turned on the mic?
IronChefMorimoto
Must... resist.. making... BAD.. BREAD.. JOKE..
.
I. Can't. Do it! Even if the joke IS a half-baked one!
Oh man, the gods of humor are gonna fry me now . .
Probably because of credit card fees. If you have a bunch of small charges, the credit card fees makes collecting the money cost almost as much as what you collect. If they just have 1 charge per (month, year, eon whatever) the credit card companies collect a lot less.
:P
Plus, if you subscribe then you are more likely to come back and make impulse buys
Monstar L
Not a single Panera around me... ...let the wardriving continue!
Paneras in Farmington and Brighton have Free Wi-Fi... and expensive bread!
Some guy down the street is the closest provider of free Wi-Fi.
They'd open some stores in the Portland Metro area. I miss their food.
No sig for you!!
this is the best kind of advertising a company could get, word of mouth. no comercials jamming their product down your throat, no psychologists that figure out ways to get your attention. just a company that makes good products, and offers the community what they want. eventually people start talking, and people find out about them.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
This this mean there will be >= 938 of them February 17, 2006 for absolutely sure?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Well they sure aren't in Kansas yet. :-(
Am I the only one that thinks any restaurant that hypes up the quality of their bread is piss poor to begin with?
I guess that's what happens when you're not a carbaholic.
Oh, and I don't get weed either.
Someone hates these cans.
Yahoo MAP is a good way to find hotspots. A while a ago I noticed that Panera's hotspots were not listed there. I emailed their marketing department (from their hotspot :-) to have their stores
listed. They said they'll
look into it but I see that they are still
not there. Now that I learned Yahoo's hotspot
directory is provided by
a company called JiWire, I
should drop them a mail again.
I personally love their cinnamon raisin bread. Its beyond explanation.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
At least at the local Panera, their free wireless connection comes equipped with the SonicWall "firewall" which blocks visits to web sites based on substrings contained in the url. The list of substrings includes things like "sm" and "cum" -- so for instance you can't google for "cosmonaut" or "accumulator" or visit the Southern Methodist University web pages. Unless, of course, you take the care to use the escape codes %xx in place of one or more of these letters...
Just wondering, is this paragon of stupidity in place at other Panera locations?
To find these hotspots in your area on a map look for them in Dowza. Fast Hotspot search engine without all the annoying adds and with good mapping.
I frequent the three Paneras here in Las Vegas, all three of them have wifi, but Nevada is completely unlisted in the FA... Oh well... Funny thing, the Henderson NV store's SSID is 'linksys', and the last few times I've been there, it's been hozed (good signal, but no DHCP server found).. Most of the managers are clueless, though once I lucked out to a manager on duty who was willing to cycle the power on the AP, which brought things back to normal.. Another thing I've found, both here at the LV stores and ones I visited in FL and GA a few months back, don't expect to stream any shoutcast/WMP stuff, the dropouts will drive you crazy.. It appears they're sharing their store network, as I found a WinNT server in my network neighborhood with the store number as a name... LVDave
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Funny, I just sat down w/ my g/f and our meal, and the first /. article I read is about the WiFi I'm using to post. I thought /. had tapped into my mind causing illusions for a second...
The best bread I've had is from Bread Alone. All others crumble in comparison. Their pumpernickel is the real thing, not the fake rye with charcoal and caramel coloring. Unfortuantely I can't get it here in MA so I'm making do with lesser bread. And don't get me started on bagels. Real bagels, not the bread dough ones. Genuine water bagels, the kind Daniel Pinkwater says you can crack a tooth on.
I was going to say something about lap-dances and such, but then it occured to me...
:)
Canton Ohio has a 'Strip'????? Is it more than a single block?
My fave wifi coffee shop usually has a half dozen people taking up tables with laptops. It's obviously not entirely bad for business, but i know i'll buy a $1.20 double espresso and sit and use their wifi for an hour.
I've never done that when it's really busy, but i'm sure people do.
"The real attraction here is that if you want people to hang around your store, just offere it up for free, or charge a very minimal amount for usage that day (not for time)."
Because they want people to buy stuff from the store, not leech the internet access and thumb through magazines or books but not buy them. Panera is a bit different because buying a cup or two or three of coffee is going to be far more likely for a customer to do than simply sit and browse the internet. I'll grant you the hourly fee is a bit steep but it's necessary for bookstores who want to offer wi-fi.
I checked there website. Their food sounds both delicious and healthy and they won an award as the best chainstore food around. And free WiFi on top of that. But alas, there are no stores in Seattle. Sigh! If only they'd set up in my neighborhood. --Mike Perry
Actually, Panera bought St. louis bread co back in the mid-90s and went ahead and made STL its headqtrs. Panera was originally a east coast bread company (forget the name).
Anyway, they kept the STL Bread CO name in STL, cuz people liked the place. Of couse, the food sucks now compared to the old STLBC and is more expensive.
Kudos on the free wi-fi though. Much better than Starbucks that charge by the freakin minute.
FUNK!
Does California to Virginia include New England?
It's a very long block.
The Tools Of Ignorance wanna be a tool?
Barnes and Noble stores that have Starbucks in them use T-Mobile's Hotspot as wifi provider.. once you subscribe to them you can use the service wherever Hotspot is available.
From TFWebsite, you can also use them in:
Starbucks coffeehouses,
Borders Books & Music stores,
FedEx Kinko's Office and Print Centers,
Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, airports, and the airline clubs of American®, Delta, United, and US Airways.
For US Locations click here
I personally dont use this service, why pay when I can go to Panera that's just around the corner..;)
Try the Turkey Artichoke sandwich!!!
Pretty much every Barns & Nobles, etc, that I've seen that has WiFi access, has it in a part of their store that is a coffee cafe. People browse a book and sip coffee. So they would probably still make the coffe/pastry sale to the WiFi leech.
I recently spent a month driving around the country with my laptop. I blogged a lot of the way without having to purchase a T-Mobile Hot Spot subscription. I did stop in a Panera Bread in Arkansas, but I was in a hurry and didn't check to see whether their WiFi worked.
This site http://wififreespot.com/ was particularly helpful for finding spots. Also, it seems that a lot of motels (especially the small independent ones) are starting to offer free WiFi with their rooms.
Also, in places where WiFi isn't available, I just used a 90-day AOL dialup trial offer which I just cancelled after the trip was over. If you're on a budget, check into a Motel 6 (free local calls) and use it. They have a grip of access numbers and I didn't have to pay long distance charges.
Free wi-fi will have to spread about if they remain successful...
Panera rules! The Frontega Chicken panini is truly outstanding.
Certainly as fast as my 1.5M DSL at home....fast enough to download XMLSPY.
There's another Panera across from Belden Village;
Panini's Bar & Grill has free access.
This is marketing hype poorly disguised as a news story. The whole article reads like it was copied verbatim from a press release for large scale wireless network solutions. It begins:
GoRemote Internet Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: GRIC) today further extended its leadership...
Panera bread is held up as a great success story for this technology. The only mention the article makes about Panera actually being the largest wi-fi provider is the following:
"Panera Bread (Nasdaq: PNRA) is the largest provider of free Wi-Fi Internet access in the United States with 575 bakery-cafes in 30 states currently offering the free service to our customers," said Panera Bread Chief Marketing Officer Michael Markowitz.
So what Slashdot, we are to believe that Panera is the largest provider because their head marketing troll says so? Jesus, have a little journalistic integrity.
------- Was it just a coincidence I got moderator points the first time I logged on to
Lap dances are 2 blocks east. ...And 3 blocks south. ...And down the highway...
If you surf at the Belden Location, you can walk to a brand new 2 story lap-dance place...
A friend of mine told me yesterday that he has been getting access in Paneras in Southern New Hampshire.
Their french onion soup is heavenly.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I was on the road (eight hour trip) in December and had to respond to an important email, but I had no idea when it would arrive. I was having an ulcer just thinking about when I'd get a chance to reply.
So when I had to stop for gas in VA I spied a Panera in a strip mall ( I had never heard of them before, but the huge "WiFi access" sign in the window caught my eye): took out my laptop, checked my email, wrote my reply and sent it from the strip mall parking lot.
I owe those guys one.
OK, I use Panera all the time. I bring in my laptop and go. (I think I registered once).
But every library I know will not let me do this.
At Carnegie Mellon U, where I was yesterday, they now require registration to use even the normal desktop (library catalog access) terminals. When I asked why, they said "hate mail".
Explain?
Actually, even if your local Panera isn't listed it probably has wi-fi. I know the one here in Orlando right off Lake Eola has it and none of the local ones are listed.
Planetes
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promo Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer" - Adolf Hitl
The one time I took my powerbook into the local one I found that it was slow as hell and that it erred overwhelmingly on the side of caution in terms of filtering. My blog got hit as "mature-adult" even though there is nothing pornographic about it. Not that I care, but it's sorta funny when I can even post blog entries because it doesn't discriminate between the Movable Type panel and my actual published pages.
Personally, I prefer the starbucks cafe that is practically next door to our Panera. It is $4.00 for two hours but basically is good enough to be like my Adelphia service at home. I haven't tried the local Daily Grind's (Virginia's Starbucks competitor chain) but they have free WiFi and knowing them I bet that it's at least decent.
In the end you get what you pay for. If I am going to be actually staying at a place for longer than to check my email, then I want something reliably usable. At Panera, I am paying indirectly because they factor the cost of the cheap WiFi into their food. At starbucks in our Barnes & Nobles, I don't even have to buy anything other than the access. Not only that, I like Starbucks coffee more than Panera's.
It's one of the great things about living in a growing college town. 25% of our population are college students and that means that local businesses can easily afford to provide these services cheaply or for free. All of our laptops are configured with WiFi cards now because the school has I think between 30 and 50 WiFi points at least now. Though ironically those stuck on campus cannot have WiFi in their dorms, even if they use 128bit WAP and restrict IP addresses.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Hello starbucks?
A friend with a cafe looked into "free WiFi" and discovered that telecom companies love to ream businesses. Yes, residential DSL was about $30/mo, but for businesses it was at least $100/month for low-end DSL (256kbps), more if you wanted decent bandwidth.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Wha? I've been to at least half a dozen in this area (Southgate, Troy, Garden City, etc.) and all have had working free WiFi.
Or can you do something like this?
As a previous poster mentioned, I would never do anything until I had an SSH tunnel or something.
Someone in promiscuous mode could ruin your whole month.
The owner of a new Moe's Burritos on campus was considering putting in WiFi. Then someone pointed out to him that it would encourage people to just hang out in there forever, not necessarily buying anything. He decided that WiFi was not a good idea right now - it's hard enough to find a table in there as is, and they have pretty quick turnover.
I wonder, though, if offering free WiFi just during their slow times (3-6) would be worth it?
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
The Panera in Princeton is often crowded, but you rarely see students on WiFi there. There is enough free* WiFi on campus that students don't need to flock to Panera for access. My sister at Cornell tells me the opposite is true in Ithaca, were a number a restaurants offer free WiFi which attracts students.
* Free WiFi with $40,000/yr tuition fee.
My attention span isn't what it used to be. My late 1970's early 80's mind, nurtured by TV and lot's of violence could only wonder if the name Panera comes from the French word "Pain" for bread.
That you, Dave? The parent was not about wifi.
-- Boycott Shell
Interesting disclaimer on their website: We regret that the manager and restaurant personnel can't provide assistance with the Krystal HotSpot as they are not computer specialists.
For the Yankees in audience, Krystal is the Southern version of White Castle.
I eat at the Panera across from my high school more often because they offer wifi. I don't always have my laptop with me, but I still like to support them because they give me a service. But wait--the wifi in the cafeteria isn't protected either--oh yeah, they don't serve good food too.
On another front, sometimes I see a group of 4-5 businesspeople at a table with laptops and no food, and it makes me want to bring my pimp A64 just to show off.
I go to the Hoboken, NJ panera from time to time because they offer free WIFI. Out of the 5 times I've been there only the first time their network was up. 2-3 times I was able to get on a different open network and once or twice there was no wifi at all.
They "provide" the service but they don't really do much to make the service available. You can't find anybody to talk to about this kind of a technical problem either.
Try telling the staff at Borders books that. I tried and they looked at me like I was crazy. After all, I was asking for free WiFi so I could look up reviews of books I wanted to get from their store. Borders has some ridiculously expensive subscription WiFi service (T-Mobile). Maybe that's why they thought my request was so odd -- they are only familiar with the overpriced WiFi service they have, perhaps they assumed that every other WiFi setup costs the same amount of money.
After the Borders employees curtly dismissed my request, I left the store and bought the books I wanted from a local bookseller -- one which offers free WiFi. Borders lost the sale and left a lingering bad memory for me.
Digital Citizen
I used to go there all the time when I was between apartments... The restaurant/wifi is great, but be prepared to spend a lot of cash $$$.
Even in a generally cheap area like Palmdale, CA they still wanted like $6 or 7 bucks for a sandwich, and 4 or 5 for a tiny bowl of soup. It is impossible to get a decent amount of food, unless you are an anorexic waif, for less than 10 bucks, not including drink.
Throw in a 4 dollar crappachino, and yer looking at close to $15. After a few visits, I began to just buy the minimum 1.50 cup of coffee, so as not to feel like a leech.
However I would have bought a lot more, and they'd make more money, if they cut their prices about 30 or 40 percent.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
HAs anyone tried that Sesame Semolina bread they have? Oh man that stuff is good, and is also great for sustained energy on century rides due to its low GI. Yummm... put that stuff in the toaster... throw some garlic butter on it... damn..
:)
Kinda overshadows the free wifi if you ask me. I'm too busy stuffing my face, and I don't want to get crumbs in my laptop
Not a single cafe in the Bay Area or even Northern California if I read the list correctly.
Why is it that Silicon Valley, the center of High Tech always gets shafted on bandwidth? It seems users in Podunk, Georgia get better DSL speeds for less money than we can get here.
It's time for a bandwidth revolt, my friend.
We're not gonna take it
No, we're not gonna take it
We don't want slow uploads anymore....
Yes, we'll run servers
So, what's wrong with that?
The internet goes both ways, when it works....
The business model is a great one for not only Panera but also for hotels and such. Hell, hotels probably spend more on the free coffee per month than they would on providing free wifi to customers.
Ponder this. For $60, they get their broadband. Pop in the access point and a gateway and you're good to go. That's it. A one time charge of maybe a couple hundred bucks (including labor) and recurring cost of $60, you'll be getting people coming day in and day out JUST because you've got free wifi. I know companies that have blown ten times that amount on marketing that brought zilch in revenue. This is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to bring people into your establishment.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Yea it is very cool, I go there all the time. I did an aritcle on this on Feb 9th. http://fantastine.com/index.php/kubrick/comments/f ree_wi_fi/
Oh man...some of the female customers who come into Panera - 3 Unfortunately, being behind the counter means you can't really do anything.
Looks like from California to Maine, to me.
They really set an example as a business: complimentary WiFi and the best bread you can get anywhere. In the meantime I am one of their best customers. Panera Bread rules!
California to Virginia? I was surfing from the parking lot this saturday in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Peep that
Not a single hotspot in North East Ohio.
Bastards.
I hate all sigs, even this one.
And getting bigger every day (Atkins? whodat?). If this item had been posted an hour or so earlier, I would have read it at one of my many local Panerae.
Don't try reading any pro-gun blogs while you're at Panera.
I work for Panera Bread. Let me say that it is no surprise to me that we're the biggest provider of Free Wi-Fi. I've only been with the company for a month and I can see why people go there: the great food, and the great environment. The free Wi-Fi draws even more people. Not to be a salesman, but if you haven't gone to a Panera Bread, try it.
--<Mike>--
Just use your home windows machine. Install cygwin with ssh and squid. When at Panera or wherever just tunnel to the squid proxy. There are lots of easy to follow tutorials on the web on how to get cygwin up and running.
Now you can visit your bank and do whatever you need to do with some hefty encryption and the only port you need to open to the world is 22.
If you have a bunch of small charges, the credit card fees makes collecting the money cost almost as much as what you collect.
Then why not make it pay-as-you-go, but from BN gift cards instead of credit cards?
firmware upgrades could make it possible to turn a huge pile of Linksys routers into 1. recurring profit for Linksys, 2. extra money for router owners
Except the terms of service for most residential Internet access plans prohibit reselling.
I work at Panera, and they did specifically tell us that it's perfectly alright for people to walk in, drink water, and use their wifi for hours.
It's possible that's not the same policy everywhere, but that's what it is here.
the food is quite good. The soup and sandwich combo is very nice.
Around here (Chicago burbs), Barnes & Noble stores do not have T-Mobile even if they do have a Starbucks. They all seem to have SBC (or something which allows SBC customers to access). It works great for me since I have SBC DSL at home.
Same problem at the Henderson NV store.. The last 5 or so times I've gone there, the AP was hozed. It's so bad, I check out the situation before going in with my PocketPC & Ministumbler to be sure the AP's working.. Sounds like this is co. polioy....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
At the second one, a few guys contributed $5 each toward the AP cost. Say the setup lasts only a year. Those few guys paid $0.60 a month, and everyone else nothing.
This is a st.louis company.. originall called (funny enough) .. St. Louis Bread Company. Used to go there to eat there twice a week on my diet until they decided that my favorite sandwich actually had 400 more calories than they originally reported it as. Really f**kin nice :(
With /. members as my witnesses, I am patenting strip clubs with free wifi. There shall be no filtering here...
eTrade SUCKS
you take this loaf!
</pantera>
It's the same way with Krystal hamburgers. People either hate them or love them. I love 'em. Plus, they have great chilli and they will actually cook a breakfast for you, eggs any style, biscuit or toast, etc. However, the service can sometimes be very slow.
I've had problems connecting with my Palm Tungsten C. I connect and get DHCP, but when I try to retrieve a page I get the "You are being connected..." page from the proxy and then nothing. If I manually go to the www.qgo.biz/panera/index.cfm page it renders the click-thru user agreement page, but then authentication usually fails (although it has worked in the past, and it varies by location). Of course, nobody ever answers the 800- help number. Anyone have similar problems?
for knowing (unlike most Americans, it seems) that thw word "scone" rhymes with "gone" :-)