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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."
Lesse, they don't want to enforce the "buy something or get out" rule? Their loss...
Easy Solution: Make people buy something to use wifi, and propose a 2-hour limit, or however much you deem necessary.
An esasier solution would be to just have hourly changing codes to enter that would be given to people who boutght something, that way, squatters would have to buy stuff every hour and therefore not be squatters anymore.
Obviously what they ought to do is give time-limited wifi passkeys that can be "charged" when the customer buys a product. That way they don't get lingerers/squatters who are only there for the wifi without having to pay.
The higher the receipt, the longer the passkey works. It's a decent system, if not a little burdensome for freeloaders.
The question becomes, How easily or feasible would it be to put such a system into practice?
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
Isn't this yet another syndrom associated with advancing technology? I can understand wanting to sneak in a few minutes of productivity during a quiet moment of opportunity but have always tried being discreet (and discrete). But I've seen the described behavior in a local Chicago coffee shop... squatters who were there at different times of the day as I passed through. Not only did they not really appear to be paying customers, they:
I have a friend who has a startup refreshment shop, and foot traffic and available space for paying customers is precious. These shop owners aren't making any fortune with their stores, they (at least my friend) do it out of love of the job (interacting with long-time customers, meeting new people, becoming an established figure of the local community).
I also have another friend who frequents a local Seattle coffee shop a lot. It seems from talking with him he is an honorable patron, but I do get the impression he doesn't interact much with anyone there.
Cell phones, laptops, pdas, portable music devices... they all have driven a somewhat asocial behavior. In public it's mostly annoying, maybe a little rude, sometimes outright boorish, but in a coffe shop, good for the owners to shut down the wireless on weekends (for example...). Sounds like they made a right move based on the almost immediate response and thanks received from regulars.
Frankly, the day cell phones and laptops, etc. become totally uncool in public can't come too soon for me. In the meantime (shameless plug) if you're looking for more social ways of using technology consider and look into BookCrossing.com. It's been mentioned here on slashdot before -- it's a cool way of using technology to share books (something a little less technical, and a lot more social).
2. ???? -> Take away WiFi
3. Profit!
There's quite a few ways to get rid of Wi-Fi geeks:
Firstly, open the curtains, turn on the lights, and turn the aircon up above 20 degrees C. Do this every hour on the hour and the shop will clear to cries of "Nooooo, the Day Star!"
Alternatively, confuse them by putting herbal sleep powder in the coffee and cola. They'll feel more drowsy, so buy more cola and coffee. Problem solved. Every few purchases, give them one infused with Penguin Mints (for added caffeine)
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It used to be a great place were you could go drink a great cup of coffee and probably meet a cute indy chick, but ever since WiFi, everyone is so buried in their iBooks updating their MySpace page that no one talks to each other.
The best part is watching the the Seattle Craigslist Missed Connection page fill up with "You are a cute 20 that something redhead sitting over there in the corner. Damn I wish you'd close your iBook so I could talk to you." posts.
to attract *paying* customers. Once again, the actions of a few spoil it for everyone else.
Eventually, some sort of ettiquette will work it's way to the surface, as it has with bulletin boards or email. I make it a point to a) seek out coffee shops with free wifi (www.delocator.net) and buy something as a sign of appreciation for the free connection. Would it kill the freeloaders to buy a small cup of decaf at the very least?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
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!
This will all sort itself out when every cafe has free WIFI. Then you won't end up with some being busy while others aren't. I frequent a place that has WIFI and that is very laptop-friendly and I can say for sure that they do a lot of business because of it. Even the lingerers spend money because they want coffee and they get hungry and want donuts and bagels.
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.
Oh? Tell that to Red Hat, et al.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
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.
works for The Office. They even have enough to spring for aerons and bose noise cancelling headphones. and i don't have to be guilted/forced into buying a muffin every 20 minutes.
for extra geek cred, joss whedon wrote 'serenity' there.
tried to enforce that? IF, as they say, the place had reached capasity, then it would be a sea of people. Are you going to go around insulting peopole who actually purchased something and throw it away when done? Nothing like making your real customers feel like squatters to discourage repeat business. And the real squatters would simply lie and say they did buy something. It NEVER works out as simply as you think.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
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
"Please. You can't fix social problems with technological solutions."
"Please. You can't fix social problems with technological solutions."
Are you joking? I don't even know where to start. Let's start with this. You are at a computer somewhere in the world. If semiconductors were to vanish tomorrow, wherever you are, your government would collapse, the balance of power in the world would be thoroughly shaken from head to foot, and millions, if not billions of people would die within a year.
Take the same number of people in New York, drop then in a forest the same size as New York, and watch how quickly society implodes upon itself without the technological infrastructure to support it.
Clearly, technology is doing something. Technology and society are so tightly tied together that you can't untangle one from the other without destroying something.
I know some times when we bang things out on the keyboard they sound really insightful and intelligent, but some times we need to respect the preview button, read what we read, and decide if it really is insightful, or a load of thoughtless crap.
Put the encryption key on the receipt, and automate this process.
A few decades ago, some restaurants and bars used to have prominent signs out front announcing that their premises were air-conditioned. Back then, not all places were, so on, say, a scorching July evening in a small town in the Kansas prairie, an air-conditioned bar or restaurant could reasonably expect to have an edge over the non-AC competition. I'm sure many proprietors noticed some of their "customers" lingering for hours over a half-eaten piece of pie or a single beer while they gabbed to their friends, obviously looking for a cheap or free way to escape the unbearable heat outside or in their homes.
Nowdays, when virtually every place of public accomodation has AC, there are no doubt still people who might nurse a single latte for hours in the local coffee shop to escape an unbearably hot apartment, but they're not going to be numerous enough to be a burden on the system. After all, there are plenty of places with AC they can go to.
The problem with Wi-Fi moochers is no doubt a real one now, but it will solve itself in time. Although it's not happening fast enough to suit me, the trends are toward free and ubiquitious Wi-Fi. When that day comes, and they're distributed among all of the bars, restaurants, coffee shops and libraries in a a given area, no one will worry about the one or two Wi-Fi moochers in their establishment at a given moment.
Wanting to turn a perfectly good internet cafe into a coffee shop!
For every present, there is a past
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
...seems to work for most places. Most people's computers only work for 1-2 hours (most batteries aren't in top condition). So unless people bring more than one battery (unlikely for broke WiFi squatters), you can get them to leave by just not providing plugs.
Stupidly, some coffeehouses have plugs all over the place anyway. Often this is left over from a previous restaurant business, where they had a lamp on every table, etc.
So if you want people to limit their stay, just limit the electricity!
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 don't quite get this.
Where I live, I actually haven't found any coffee shops that give away WiFi. That's OK, I'm willing to pay on the rare occasions when I need it, and to buy a coffee that I don't really want, and to limit my stay if the place is busy. I figured that made me a pretty good citizen. Turns out I'm also obligated to make friends with everyone?
Sorry, no offense to anyone, but I don't go there for that; if they didn't have WiFi, I probably wouldn't be there at all. If I was, computer or not, I'd drink my coffee and leave without talking to anyone, unless I ran into someone I knew (and I know and am friends with many people). Some people are extroverts, some aren't. It doesn't have anything to do with stuff.
Does that somehow limit the ability of others to engage in conversation? Not that I can see, but maybe I'm missing something. If you sell coffee and WiFi, you attract people who need coffee and/or WiFi, and lot of them might not know that they are also supposed to be giving warm fuzzy feelings to the owners and the rest of the clientele.
ElBuf
I believe the idea is that it would be less of a hassle to just go somewhere that has power outlets (their house maybe?). Buying and carrying lots of laptop batteries is neither economical nor "coffee house cool".
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
They can't do that. Internet access WANTS to be free. It's evil to force people to pay for something of value.
The world will be a much better place when everyone gets everything they want for free. These "businesspeople" are just greedy bastards who are trying to opress the masses.
And what's this with paying for the coffee? I don't have to pay for my coffee at work, so why should I have to pay for the coffee at the coffee shop? Coffee wants to be free, too.
Anyone who opposes the Open Coffee and Open Wi-Fi movement is clearly a slave of Bill Gates. They must be stopped. Someone should do something about them. Me, I'm too busy looking for free broadband internet access to liberate my mp3s, movies, and software.
I hate it when I make a joke and I get modded "+5 insightful". Mod the stupid comments "funny", not "insightful", pleas
The purchase rule they instituted seems to have stopped any squatting (except for my friend who uses the connection to play World of Warcraft in his car after hours- and even he buys things during the day!).
I suspect that in the case of the coffee shop in question, the squatters were simply taking up space where the normal coffee-buyers would have otherwise sat. Probably, the ultimate solution would be to institute a buying policy, but a fairly lenient one. After all, sometimes I come in and I can only afford a couple of Cokes over the course of a few hours- but they know I buy stuff whenever I come in (a lot of times the more pricey stuff), and so they don't hassle me about it. That's the kind of thing that makes me want to come back to a business. I didn't even like coffee the first time I came in!
"Sometimes it takes more than an axe and a busload of strangers to work through your anger." -Rikk Estoban
Here in L.A. it's especially annoying because we have lots of actors and screenwriters who use Starbucks as their production office. Personally, I don't think one cup of $4 coffee justifies using a whole table for your office all day, plus electricity. There should just be a time limit for everyone- to give customers a chance to come and go. One thought I had, can you get the WiFi signal if you sit outside the location? Why not have some overflow seating outside for the squatters? Of course, as was mentioned above, removing access to power outlets would probably eliminate a lot of this problem. Then again, maybe these coffee shops need to be redesigned to allow for more people, and for social gatherings- like bars. Have a fooseball table, a pool table, daycare, petcare, etc.
More power to 'em. In fact, I'd suggest that anyone entering w/ any electronic info device (yes, including cellphones) on the weekend be shown the exit and visited with a hail of derisive boos and laughter.
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
That is the problem but the way the place is laid out. It has hard back chairs (libary style) with hardtop slate tables which each seat between 2-4 people. Reminds me of a restaurant evey time I walk in there. Perfect for studying, but no "community" feeling about it. Can you imagine walking up to another person's table at a restaurant and striking up a conversation? It would be a bit awkward.
The owners lament about the erosion of culture being the cause is pure BS. Make no mistake, this is simply about $$$$, nothing else.
Just up the street though is the non-profit Cafe Perkatory which is laid out like a living room with soft chairs, nice rug on the floor, and great Wi-Fi. And there is no complaints about erosion of culture there. Almost every time I walk into the place I am gauranteed to strike up a conversation with a new and interesting person.
However, if Perkatory isn't your "Cup 'O Tea" then you can always try one of the hundreds of other weekend Wi-Fi enabled coffee shops in seattle which are conveinently listed here.
I'm not a big famous coffeeshop but I have my share of customers. Even though I like to occasionally surf the web to see if I can chat with other coffeeshops (it's lonely being a coffeeshop), it's really affected my self-esteem. I feel very used, like people forgot why I'm here (hint: coffee, you idiot!). I suppose they were always here just because of some or other product, I felt like I was a part of giving coffee to my customers, via my slav..employees. Now they just come to hook up and tune out. I'm left watching the little lights on the router flash. I'm tempted to pour coffee in their fucking laptops, but pulling the plug on their connection has made them realize that I do matter and that I am in control.
Change the priorities around if you want a different business model and still make some loot. Have a "WiFi hangout shop" that also has coffee and munchies on the side, plus maybe sell hardware??? Possibly get customers and be competitive by offering a faster connection than the "coffee shops with free wifi" guys. Charge by the hour or something like that, maybe make it a club you can join and get a month/yearly severe discount rate. Offer a choice, too, ethernet or wireless at the table. So much an hour (reasonable), and free coffee!
Hah. I can tell you right now, it has very little to do with the $$$$.
I'm friends with both Kyle, head barista trainer there, and Tony, head roaster there. Victrola Coffee is a place that is unbelievably dedicated to coffee. They are not in the business for making $$$, because the margins in Specialty Coffee are quite frankly absolute crap. They're in the business to make the best possible espresso period. Which is why they get consistently reviewed as one of the top if not the top cafe in seattle in terms of quality.
They care about community and they care about coffee. If they were in it for the $$$$ they would be serving crap starbucks coffee and paying their Baristas minimum wage.
I think a lot of people here are missing one of the main points of TFA - the interpersonal culture of the coffee shop was disappearing. Instead of being a place where people interact "live" with other human beings, it was turning into a place full of people silently hunched over their laptops. I don't think it's an unreasonable decision to turn off the wifi (at least on the weekend).
If you were a hot dog, and you were starving, would you eat yourself?
Maybe in Seattle there's so damn many coffeehouses that there's not much loyalty? It's a competitive market, so it's not a surprise to me that there are callous people who take advantage of the wireless freebie. Or, maybe that's how Seattle people are. I don't know.
My own California experience with 802.11-enabled coffee places is very different: there does seem to be an ethic of supporting the establishment.
Yes, I've done four-hour sits at Coffee Critic in Ukiah, CA using their access for work stuff, but I also buy lots of coffee there too (and good coffee it is - they roast it on-premises) and did so without the wireless "loss leader". I've easily bought enough product in a year there to pay for the AP, if not the bandwidth.
...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.
I never understood sitting in a coffee shop with a laptop for an hour, much less several.
It's all about checking out the cute high/college/grad school girls hanging out there doing their reading.
My other first post is car post.
Giving people access codes based on purchases is incredibly lame and hurts the the natural warm vibe of a good coffeeshop.
To All Coffee Shop Owners:
- Give away wifi.
- Gently enforce purchases with use of table space . Aka, more or less ban squatting.
- VERY IMPORTANT: Create laptop zones and/or make laptoppers sit with each other and not hog 4 person tables. It'd probably help people meet each other and it'll conserve space. Alternatively, have lots of little tables that barely fit one laptop.
Problem solved!!
A Victrola Regular
We've already established that there's now a class of people who aren't bothered even slightly by that....
technolgy is intergrated with are society, but it has in no way fixed any societal problems.
WE adapted technology into the way we bahave, not the other wya around.
My favorite farside has a guy sitting in a little flying saucer zipping through the sky. On the roof of this flying saucer is a spilling cup of coffee.
the caption:
"Technology changes, people don't."
BTW, BILLIONS would not die. Most of the world would get along. A billion, at the worst. consider most people in the world never use a computer
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
One of the cafes I spend time at has a really nice way of limiting WiFi use. They have a little tape printer with three buttons, one for 30, 60, & 90 minutes. When you make a purchase, you ask for some wifi time, they hit a button and hand you a recipt. It has a randomly generated username and password that lasts for just the requested time. I rarely need more than 90 minutes (I usually hook up there before heading to the office). It's nice becuase it's still free, but they can still keep it reasonable with their business needs (only with a purchase, for limited time). This is by far the best setup I've found. Totally free and unlimited is nice, but if it's only on DSL and there are a bunch of WiFi campers, the throughput totally slows down. On the other hand some places charge hourly for wifi, even with a purchase, this just pisses me off.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
the yuppie leechers go out and spend $120 on a spare battery... to save fifty cents on a cup of coffee.
Leeching, it's not just an activity, it's a way of life.
You're totally right. An elegant solution would be expensive to do. How about a more crude implementation: 1. Buy 6 cheap netgear APs at Fry's for $10 each. 2. Configure each one with a different, but simple WEP. Use masking tape to label each one with its WEP.
3. Connect each one to one of those cheap electric outlet timer gizmos so it runs for an hour then shuts off. Sync the timers so one there is always at least one running.
4. Put all this junk behind the counter.
5. Magic marker a sign that says, "Ask cachier to write the wi-fi password on your receipt." Attach to front of counter.
The barrista can easily look at the APs to see which is turned on and give out the password taped on it. I agree that one hour is a little short. With this timer deal, you can even set it for 1.5 hours. Sure, over time, a crafty customer is going to collect all the passwords. You could change them each week and relabel the masking tape on the APs.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!