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McDonalds Free Wi-Fi Users Soak Up Seating
bfire writes "McDonalds has earmarked potential changes to seating plans in some restaurants to prevent free Wi-Fi users from monopolizing seating, particularly in peak periods. The availability of Wi-Fi means people are now spending 35 minutes in McDonalds — rather than the average ten minutes that patrons used to spend eating there. But it appears not everyone is happy with the increased 'stickiness' of customers, with some licensees in Australia reporting that Wi-Fi users aren't turning over seats fast enough. The restaurant chain is considering options including space demarcation to deal with the problem."
Because we all know they are just sitting there waiting to get first post.
Oh wait...
I lost me sig.
I'd suggest McDonalds try dumping coffee on their laps, but they'd probably get sued for millions of dollars.
HEYO!
Go to Panera Bread. They have free wi-fi there, too. The food is quite a bit better, and healthier, than all that fried and preprocessed crap that McDonald's dishes out,...
I once heard that the reason McDonald's used to outfit its restaurants with hard plastic bench seats colored garish orange and yellow was for that reason -- so you wouldn't want to stick around too long. Has it changed its mind recently?
Breakfast served all day!
What did they think would happen ?, of course people are going to stay longer maybe add more seating or extend the range to cover a larger area so users could sit in their cars and use the WIFI there.
Just a thought
R.Morton
modded quote "what's that he's talking about? Windows , Never had a problem with Windows till I tried to use it."
Even if I did eat McDonalds food there I don't think I like the atmosphere enough to stay. There coffee tastes like piss anyway. With all the great local free wifi around where I live I'd have to be pretty desperate to go there. Simple solution: open up a coffee shop next door.
Let's see...connection time is free, **AA complaints go to McD's IP address, and people stay longer...what are the odds of THAT?
rj
I never understood what was the point of putting these things in places where turnover is a few minutes. It encourages loitering. It is not like customers pay for refills, or are otherwise likely to buy more product.
Of course the solution is simple. Do what other places are doing. Limit the time. If they want turnover in 10 minutes, make that the time limit. The point stands, though. WiFi in places like this just seems silly. OTOH, I know of places that have gone out of business after they got rid of the WiFi. They did not like hanging around in the afternoon drinking coffee, but those same people also stopped coming around for the evening meal.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Last time I saw McWiFi, it was Windows only and needed some sort of login. I run Linux so no McWiFi for me...
rather than the average ten minutes that patrons used to spend eating there
I only ever sat there for 10 minutes because that's all it took for the diarrhea to activate after eating that addictive crap. Sitting any longer and the chairs would be a different color.
- James
They don't want sticky customers. The signs in the bathrooms require that employees wash hands. But you know, the last time I was there, no employee would wash my hands... I wanted to complain but people made me leave.
...followed by "Stroke"...
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
It seems to me that they could have a system set up such that you buy something and you can request a code for minutes of WiFi, maybe every dollar you spend on their product gets you a bonus of five minutes internet time. A combo would be half an hour. That way you don't get the people that just buy a coffee (or even not even buy anything) and stick around for an hour. That should cut the average time down and free up the seats.
I think I've heard of some shops turning off WiFi during rush hours simply because they don't have enough seats and would end up losing customers because people that want what they're selling end up going elsewhere.
PANERA Bread already solved this problem. If you go to a PANERA during peak hours, you get roughly 10-15 minutes of free WiFi, and then you're shut off, at the MAC address level. Thankfully, I have GNU macchanger installed, so I can grab some more time, but they're already doing it programatically.
What's funny is watching someone come in, spill out their entire office on the table (manila file folders, laptop, external number pad and everything), and then get shut off because they sat chatting at the coffee machine for 10 minutes while their laptop was connected, and shut their laptop down, only to stare at me working for 30+ minutes at a time.
Am I breaking the rules? Maybe... but I also buy a breakfast, then a tea, then a lunch in the same 1-2 hours I'm there. I also have WWAN, so if WiFi was turned off, I could still continue to work, without changing anything (all built-in).
McDonalds should just limit the free wifi to 10-15 minutes and be done with it. Oh, and also SHUT IT OFF at the end of the night, so people don't just park in the parking lot and steal your wifi for nefarious means.
As with most of these "problems", the solution is rarely technical. It is usually a political problem that stops the solution from being implemented.
I've read over your post four times now and I still have no idea what your point is.
Something about hot dogs? Now I'm all hungry again after dinner, thanks.
.
This is the idiocy of how some businesses deal with networking and the internet. First, they offer free. Then they find out when you offer free, people actually use it, and so the same business turns around and gets upset that people are using what you are offering for free?
Yes, people like free wi-fi, and you offered it in order to drum up traffic and hope those customers would buy stuff, which they did. But you like the business it brings in but you don't like those people freeloading on your network and in your seats when you need more people to be buying stuff?
Yo, McDonalds! Suck it up! You put yourself in this position now you have to deal with it like adults. You either have to limit free to like ten minutes of free, which does reduce the number of people who will come in since they might go to the coffee shop down the road, charge access fees, which also reduces walk ins, or accept that your restaurants don't have enough seats any more. You got greedy and wanted to steal some of the coffee shop crowd to your stores and now you are dealing with the fact that two business ideas are conflicting. Coffee shops work well with wi-fi business models because they have comfy chairs and lounges and expect their clientel to pay a lot for coffee and sit down for a while. It's about atmosphere. You have cheap coffee, no atmosphere, and expect to be selling coffee in volume.
I have a feeling Mickey D's is going to come up with stupid artificial rules that it will expect their employees to enforce and it's going to get ugly and moronic before they end the free wi-fi.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Has it changed its mind recently?
Apparently, but some franchisees are complaining (rightly IMHO) about "too much" turnaround time in their restaurants. The "fast turnaround" has always been a selling point, either stated or implied, for any potential McDonalds franchisee. For those of you who don't know or have never owned a franchise many business details are NOT up to you the owner, but rather are spelled out in your franchise agreement with the franchise owners (i.e. the McDonalds Corporation). So for example, if the franchise owners decide that all locations will now offer fancy coffee then you must pay for and have the necessary equipment installed even if you don't think that such expansion would be worth the cost in your particular location, perhaps a truck stop in the midwest were overcooked eggs and plain black coffee are the "traditional" breakfast. In this case McDonalds has mandated that you provide WiFi access to customers because the marketing drones at corporate have decided that all hip restaurants catering to the under thirty crowd must offer free WiFi to be relevant. However, this may be the first time that a new directive from corporate has conflicted with a long standing element of the core business (which many franchisees count on for their profitability), namely fast turnaround of tables in the dinning area.
A simple solution : print an access code on tickets you receive when buying some food. Should only be unique and valid for a couple of minutes. Access code expired ? Buy more stuff or get the hell out ! Solved.
The whole point of McDonalds was to get the people in and get them out, as quickly as possible. IF you go to any decently run McDonalds, there will be several times as many cars as there are in any other food place in the area. Those franchises just print money. Putting in wifi just slows down the presses.
This is my sig.
Now that cellular broadband is becoming cheap, public wifi may be on the way out anyway.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
They don't want sticky customers. The signs in the bathrooms require that employees wash hands. But you know, the last time I was there, no employee would wash my hands... I wanted to complain but people made me leave.
If your hands were sticky after leaving the bathroom stall, the employees were right to refuse service.
Tell the users that they can use the wireless until a trap door opens up underneath them and they are dumped into a vat of boiling french fries. Their times are announced by some junior on front counter with a megaphone.
"Come in number 192.168.1.121, your time is up"
Task Mangler
I'm selective about what I eat from there
I would be willing to bet that McDonalds and Panera share more than a few suppliers for their products. I think selectivity in food probably doesn't actually buy you too much in the long run. The human body has evolved to eat some genuinely sick stuff, and even the Golden Arches is a damn site better than a few bits of rib meat from a four day dead Zebra. If there's a problem with McDonalds, and other modern foods, medical science seems more to conclude that the food is actually -too good- for us, and so we get fat. I think the only thing one can do is probably fast one day a week, to simulate the conditions for which we are bred.
This is my sig.
Yes, but I don't think someone buying their cheapest coffee and sitting abusing the wi-fi for 3 hours compensates for the lost sales in all the other stuff.
Sure, at 3am, it might fill in some slack spots in their business, but at peak time, they want a regular rotation of clients to maximize peak-hour sales.
Ever tried getting into a Starbucks after about 7pm ? Absolutely jam packed, and invariably everyone is hogging the comfy seats with a laptop and a coffee cup with about 5mm of cold, 3 hour old coffee in the bottom. Starbys can get away with it by selling their coffee at crazy prices, but McDo coffee is dirt cheap (not to mention it also tastes like dirt).
They can't afford malingerers, and in most cases, I'll bet the franchise holders would dump it like a shot if head office would allow them to.
How about disabling the wi-fi during peak times when serving food becomes priority #1? You could even post a nice little sign saying something like: "In order to better service you, free Wi-Fi is available from XX:XX to YY:YY."
Or, you know, making the access available with purchases only, for a set period of time according to dollar amount spent. How about 15 minutes for every 5 dollars, with access codes printed right on the receipt? That seems to solve the problems of everyone worth mentioning. Hell they might even make money off the deal (but that's evil and wrong, amirite?)
This is exactly what CAs and SSL are for.
If you are even thinking about logging into your email, check the cert. A MiTM attack can't work unless the attacker has a valid cert, if they do, then what does it matter where you connect from?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Business offers customers free wifi, which has the twin effects of attracting more customers and some of them staying longer. This is news? In other breaking news headlines, water is wet!
What caught my eye was the last two paragraphs of the article:
The wifi service is backed by a secure internet gateway product from wholesaler earthwave called Clean Pipes, which is there in part to apply McDonalds' Family Friendly policies to the service.
It had so far not detected any major 'red flag' sessions that had to be reported to law enforcement authorities, a representative of earthwave said.
Why isn't the news story here that McDonalds has a program in place to spy on customer's wifi usage, to get customers arrested?
If my phone company were eaves dropping on my conversations to report to the police, I would have a problem with that.
If my ISP were eaves dropping on my internet phone calls or other communications to report to the police, I would have a problem with that.
If a company is offering free wifi connections, obviously the standards are somewhat different than dealing with my own phone company or my own ISP, however I still consider it outrageous and a primary news item that a company *does* have a program in place to spy on communications over their free wifi, one dedicated to having those customers arrested.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
the food is actually -too good- for us
weeeeell...
Since the natural world is fairly low on salt, sugar and fat, we're built to want as much as possible, because it practice that was the best way to get as close as possible to the optimum.
Because our modern world is different, our bodies' way of aiming for optimal is broken. Too much fat is bad for you, as we all know.
Similarly, we figure out if we get oxygen enough not by measuring oxygen but my measuring CO_2 which back then was a good enough approximation of a lack of oxygen. Nitrogen fools us into not worrying about oxygen concentration when in fact we need to.
I think the only thing one can do is probably fast one day a week, to simulate the conditions for which we are bred.
We were also built to cope with large amounts of pain. That doesn't mean we should inflict it upon ourselves just to get a more true simulation.
Showing some care about your diet while not going to the other extreme is probably the right thing to do. Golden mean and all that ;)
One could argue that "The human body has evolved to eat some genuinely sick stuff". Then again, the human body has also evolved for us to live long enough to pass on our genes and help our progeny become independent - that's less than 30 years - anything beyond that is not a significant evolutionary advantage.
Notice how the predominance of cancer is much higher in societies where the average life expectancy is higher than 30 years old ...
I for one, would like to live a long time and be as healthy as possible during that period - hence being selective with food is important.
Basically:
If it looks like a cauliflower, a pea, broccoli or a Brussels's sprout then it probably is a cauliflower, pea, broccoli or a Brussels's sprout.
If it's mashed paste of stuff, optionally cooked or baked (like bread, hamburgers, sausages, mash potatoes) then all bets are off and anything can be mixed in.
The more processed a piece of food is, the more likely it's full of all sorts of things that won't harm you on the short term (if it outright killed you or harmed you the manufacturer would be sued and closed) but might harm you on the long term (good luck proving the link between some artificial additive that was in those hamburgers you use to eat when you were a teen and the colon cancer you got 10 years latter).
If you want good healthy food, go for fresh vegetables (and fruit, meat and fish) instead of the processed kind.
To maximize seating efficiency at peak times, in Korea McDonalds apparently has ushers that will place customers in empty seats next to other customers.
Choice of music is another tool commonly used to influence how long customers stay. At peak times, they'll play up-beat songs. At off-peak times they'll play more soothing music to encourage people to hang around longer, so as to avoid having the place look like a ghost town.
And there's always the 'Can I take your tray sir/madam' line when they're getting desperate. I get that one a lot when I'm half-finished, annoys the crap out of me. So I like to chew, what's wrong with that?
You're not talking about the food, are you?
Well then.. what do you call a Quarter pounder in Chile?
McRoyale with cheese, motherfucker?
We now have this new thing called "HTTPS" that can prevent such things.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
You know how when you're done eating the waiter or waitress usually comes over to ask if you want either (a) dessert or (b) the check? They're not trying to make conversation with you, they want you to either spend money or get out of the chair.
There are a lot of nice coffee shops where they won't do that, they make you feel at home, etc. But not all of them are like that, and in what way is preferring a paying customer to one who's already finished indicative of scumbaggery?
"Goat head"...wonder if they taught you that when you got one of your many degrees :P
Stop offering free Wi-fi.
Seems that it's a net cost. The extra custom doesn't cover the increased cost of requiring more tables. Not quite sure what the point is.
Bullshit. There is no such thing as "empty calories". That very concept is on par with those who sell you some holistic natural salt based on claims that its mollecules are more jagged like the natural ones, not round and unnatural like the industrial made ones. Or on par with the audiophile-grade network cables. It's bullcrap for idiots who want to feel all superior about their nutrition, but aren't actually smart or educated enough to understand nutrition.
For a start pretty much any animal meat will contain the same aminoacids (in its proteins) as your body is made of. There is very little you can do, short of incinerating that meat to a fine ash, to destroy those and be left with "empty calories."
Do you understand that? There is no fucking thing that McDonald can do to a piece of beef or chicken (while still keeping it edible at all) to stop it from having the exact same 20 aminoacids that your body uses or needs.
Also your body is very good at synthetising various things from various other things. E.g., sugars get turned into fats and viceversa. (Which is why Atkins works or why drinking will give you a fat liver.) E.g., over half the aminoacids can be synthetised from other stuff, and viceversa.
Even "empty calories" would still have their use, since the above synthesis takes energy, same as anything your body uses. It has to come from somewhere.
But again, there is no such thing as "empty calories". There are sugars, fats, proteins, etc, which incidentally your body can all burn to energy. Or use in other ways.
"Different types of calories" and storing the different types as fat? Do you even know what a calory is, junior? Or what fat is? It's the same fat stored in your cells either way. If your body can convert something into fat, it will be the same fat which is used as an energy reserve. As the _same_ kind of energy reserve, as it'll get converted into glucose first when it's needed as fuel.
There is no such thing as storing, say, vitamins or proteins as fat for later.
So do yourself a favour. If you want to talk about nutrition, read about nutrition, not sensationalist pseudo-science or sensationalist propaganda.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I got a vasectomy for a reason.
In your case, wouldn't that be like winterizing a home in Florida?
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
Learn the concept of paragraphs if you want your comments read.
No, I did not bother.
That's too bad. He had a few good points in there.
By all means, feel free to suggest to him that shorter paragraphs are useful on the web, to help people with a low IQ and short attention spans more easily digest what you write. The screen is a different medium to paper after all, so a paragraph of that size - that wouldn't be too out of place in a good textbook - is a little on the chunky side here.
But your blatant "make it easy for me or fuck off" attitude is disheartening. No, don't bother to try and comprehend the point he's trying to make, it's just not worth the outrageous mental effort required to read 10 whole lines of continuous text.
I am by no means a Rhodes scholar, but if your attitude is typical of today - and there's plenty of evidence to suggest that it is - well, I weep for the future.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Well, for one, they have a large number of people hopping on and off their network, and they don't maintain a constant business relationship with them which would help them identify rogue or criminal users. And on top of that, a little self-regulation to catch criminals will help them ward off legislation like this which is a Stasi-like surveillance boot-up-the-ass that has support in both parties.
And here's a question for you. Who the hell do you think you are using someone else's network for free and then complaining that they check up on your behavior from time-to-time? This isn't your ISP. This is a private business which is giving you free access to their wireless for your personal enjoyment.
Yes, tragedy of the friggin commons -- if you don't charge by the unit, people use more than others around them would like. Only a goldfish would see this as a revelation ... encountering the same plastic castle and being shocked every time -- "hey, look, a castle!"
Yep. The kid-friendly factor is key. I like Panera Bread, but I have yet to see a single one with a kid's "play place" in it.
There's also the related issue, that if you actually want some uninterrupted time to USE a wi-fi connection and read news, email, etc. while your kid is with you, you're NOT going to get it unless they offer things to keep your kid occupied at the same time.
I can't imagine taking even the most well-behaved kid to a regular restaurant, and expecting him/her to just quietly sit there, bored out of his/her mind, while I crack open my laptop and start reading and replying to messages, chatting with people on IM, or anything else.
Qualification: I am childless and likely to remain so, not because of a lack of suitable partner.
I've seen this "ban kids from public places" rant before. It ignores a few points. From a practical point of view, it ignores that fact that parents of small children still need to occasionally go places, and sometimes need to take the child. To use your airliner example: since many places are unreachable or terribly inconvenient to reach without air travel from specific other places, it is more or less impossible to ban children on planes. "I am sorry ma'am, you cannot go to your father's funeral across the country, because we don't allow children on airplanes." Yeah, that's going to go over well. You think the air travel industry is in trouble now, wait till they stop allowing kids.
From a legal point of view, both children and their parent remain citizens and residents of their respective homes. I'm quite certain that there would be discrimination lawsuits in the offing at any legal attempt to bar them from various premise. While certainly it is within a proprietors right to ban children, I think people would have trouble with a government attempting to do so. As it IS within a business's rights to ban children, and very few chose to, it seems that the business case for it probably isn't that good. I'm sure that a decent sized town can support a few, and a larger city many more, restaurants that don't allow children to make for a more elegant dining experience. You can chose to frequent those. I seriously doubt that many low or mid range restaurants could afford the lost revenue though (and probably not even ALL high end restaurants).
In short: Children make noise. At least until they reach kindergarten age (or so) they are often incapable of NOT making noise. They simply haven't learned how to be quiet yet. Businesses that chose not to cater to children do exist, but to make up for excluding a large market, they usually charge more. Often for this reason they are "fancy" places. Most businesses probably cannot or would not want to afford to do this. Trying to ban children legally is almost certainly not possible.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.