Slashdot Mirror
A Coffeeshop's Weekends Without Wi-Fi
Glenn Fleishman writes "Victrola Cafe and Art in Seattle is a popular coffeeshop that offers free Wi-Fi--except on the weekends. In an experiment, the cafe started shutting down its Wi-Fi network on Saturdays and Sundays after watching their culture erode: the shop became full (and was turning away customers) with six-to-eight hour Wi-Fi squatters, many of whom didn't even purchase anything. Their second Sunday without Wi-Fi was one of their best revenue days in some time. I don't propose a Wi-Fi (or free Wi-Fi) backlash, but it's interesting how with some time under their belt, the clash of inward facing technology and outward facing culture hit these particular entrepreneurs' limit."
In an experiment, the cafe started shutting down its Wi-Fi network on Saturdays and Sundays after watching their culture erode: the shop became full (and was turning away customers) with six-to-eight hour Wi-Fi squatters, many of whom didn't even purchase anything.
Considering that most people have Internet at home, on campus, or at work, this is just a rude thing to do. Coffee shops provide Wifi so you can relax with a cup of coffee in a comfortable atmosphere while still being able to get that little extra bit of work done. There's no way that's accomplished by squatting in the coffee shop for 8 hours on end. If that's you, get some manners, and get a life.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
We here in Personal Telco Project ( http://www.personaltelco.net/ )country, that being Portland Oregon, have not seen this particular behavior go on. In fact we have seen the exact flip side in most of the cafes we help get nodes into.
There are several coffe houses who can point to the day the PTP node went in as the day thier revenues went up, noticably.
There are communities that can point to the day some one put up a neighborhood node to as the day folks started spreading the goodness.
We have found that when folks put up a Free Wifi Node and all that it can entail (not just internet access but community based local content (web, daap, zeroconf, ftp, distro repositories , etc etc) the community of users are enriched and the people hosting the node are not abused to the point of wanting to turn it off.
Maybe we are truly in the right place at the right time with the right mix of citizens, who are the riches of any city as b!x will tell you. Im not sure whats cooking up there in Seattle but i hope it gets better.
-tomhiggins
www.personaltelco.net
Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap! Poor little clams! Snap! Snap! Snap!
It's funny to see how everyone here is an expert in business, marketing, general human psychology, and the like. "Charge for this", "put up signs for that", "only allow this"...it's not that easy.
There is a fine balance between welcoming people that will eventually turn into customers and attracting hordes of freeloaders, from enforcing a policy that keeps paying customers happy while they surf to appearing to be too harsh like you're running a police state in your store. Let's face it...each restaurant, each cafe, each location in a city has its own unique needs. The Panera Bread that offers free WiFi in a college town may need to have a monitor walk the store and ask abusers of the free WiFi to leave while the Panera in a DC suburb may have mindful users that monitor themselves as they come in, grab lunch, surf, and leave. Timed access codes may work for some places, purchase-required policies may be needed in others, and some may be able to offer it 24/7 without incident.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Just set up bandwidth shaping so that each MAC address gradually starts slowing way down after an hour. Slow, not stopped, means they have a chance to finish their work and log off cleanly. They'll get the idea. I've seen this in other contexts; it works well and minimises arguments and overhead.
---
Copyright is a privilege, not a right.
Would it kill the freeloaders to buy a small cup of decaf at the very least?
That may not be good enough. In Hawaii there was a vote on outlawing smoking in buildings. One restraunt owner being interviewed pointed out that they had already done so voluntarily and it greatly improved business, contrary to the popular wisdom. They pointed out that they had much better table turnover without the smokers, and that the smokers were often only buying a coffee but occupying a table for a long time.
Yes this is a restraunt not a coffee shop but the point is that wifi'ers, like smokers, occupy a finite resource, table space, disproportionately to their purchase. The wifi'ers can only be tolerated if table space is abundant.
i've noticed that most of the coffeeshops i still like to go to just to drink coffee and hang out with people have limited numbers of people using laptops. i've also noticed that the reason not many people use laptops is the shop has few or no publicly accessible power outlets. ie your laptop use is limited to the life of your battery - the kind of people who want to spend six hours hunched over their laptop are go elsewhere.
i'm waiting to see how long it takes places drowning in the 'six hour wifi session and one cup of coffee people' to just blank their power outlets off. way less hassle than trying to enforce purchase per hour rules or other annoyances.
i'm kind of waiting for if you want to use your laptop, you're limited to battery life
Easiest would be to just have no power plugs. Your average laptop doesn't last that long.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
but can someone please give a free / simple way of doing that?
Does anyone know one of those systems that only let ppl surf on the store webpage and to access the rest of the internet you have to put an username/password ?
I've been looking for this for a long time, but haven't found none
It seems social problems beg for social solutions, and most of the solutions I've seen in the replies are different varities of how to make sure only paying customers get the wifi. That's not a bad idea, but it doesn't solve the problem of a lack of atmopshere. (BTW: rolls of tickets like fairs use come cheap. Don't let numbers be used twice, and lock out a MAC after a few wrong guesses.)
Anyway, my solution: On the first hit to any page from a new MAC, or on a new token, go to a site for the coffee shop. Have a web-based chat there. Encourage your patrons to use it, post news there, etc. The idea is to get the geeks to come out of their shells for a bit. Try to get the "missed connections" stuff on there, and perhaps the cute girl on the iBook will see it in time.
And if that doesn't work, well, perhaps turning off the wifi is a good idea.
I was at the beach two weeks ago. Found a Starbucks that offered one hour of access for $3 with the password printed on the receipt. Trivially easy to log in. The one hour limit kept my wife from going ballistic we me spending to much time on the net.
They even managed to sell me some coffee. It was a win-win-win situation.
Seriously, though, who ever *wants* to use wifi in a coffee shop? I'd much rather be in my office, using a real keyboard and mouse, or in my house, lounging around on the couch while surfing. I reserve free/pay coffee shop wifi for desperate times -- business trips; times when work is way too hectic an environment, etc. Six or eight hours on a laptop keyboard? I'd be dead.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
"I never understood sitting in a coffee shop" It's called the rule of: doing what makes you happy. I don't understand why certain things make certain people happy, but then I don't have to. I just know what makes me happy. And that happens to be coffee shops and book stores. For you it isn't (at least the coffee shop part). It's really not a mystery.
...with a password prompt and the message 'your server will gladly enter the password for you'? I'd wager that having to interact with the wait staff to get connected would dramatically reduce the number of leeches.
Making the world a better place, one psychotic episode at a time.