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Some LA Coffee Shops Are Taking Wi-Fi Off the Menu
As New York is putting Wi-Fi on wheels, reader Hugh Pickens notes a counter trend in Los Angeles coffee shops. (We remarked on a similar backlash in Seattle in 2005.) "Coffee shops were the retail pioneers of Wi-Fi, but Jessica Guynn reports in the LA Times that now some owners are pulling the plug after finding that Wi-Fi freeloaders who camp out all day nursing a single cup of coffee are a drain on the bottom line. Other owners strive to preserve a friendly vibe and keep their establishments from turning into 'Matrix'-like zombie shacks where people type and don't talk. 'There is now a market niche for not having Wi-Fi,' says Bryant Simon. After Dan and Nathalie Drozdenko turned off the Wi-Fi at their Los Angeles cafe, the complaints poured in, but so did the compliments: Lots of customers appreciated a wireless cup of joe at the Downbeat Cafe, a popular lunch spot in Echo Park. 'People come here because we don't offer it. They know they can get their work done and not get distracted.'"
Yeah, like that "novel" they've been "working on."
Less of a problem. Bandwidth is cheap. Non-paying customers take up valuable table-space.
Cutting off wireless access is pretty pointless. The better solution is to give 2 free hours and then give a code when you buy something else that gives you another 2. That at least keeps the freeloaders at bay. Caribou does something similar to this already. You aren't going to keep people from sitting there and surfing the internet though just by cutting off wi-fi. I like to take my iPad to coffee shops and read the news and it's tethered to my phone so I still have free internet regardless. I think had you done this in the early 2000s yeah, you would have stopped people from turning your coffee shop into an internet cafe, but in 2010, it's a little late.
This shit isn't hard.
Drink less coffee.
I'm almost sorry for that one. Almost...
Entirely agree. They should lock the wifi and your receipt comes with a code for a free 30/60 minute wifi key. They do this at the local Burger Kings in my area. Wifi is free, but you have to purchase food to get a limited amount of time to use it. The problem here is the trading/asking for receipts. I guess the local Burger King does this right too, they only print the code on the receipt if you _ask_ for it. It's sort of like asking for no pickles on your sandwich, there is no charge or deduction, just a note that you want no pickles.
The greater Los Angeles area is huge. If you looked up "urban sprawl" in the dictionary, you'd find a picture of LA. Consequently, services like WiFi and GSM/CDMA are not as heavily concentrated as they are in cities like San Francisco or New York, where the population density is higher. In general, I find the idea of being able to drive around the city and expect to find open access points to be laughable. So where does that leave those annoying Hollywood hipsters and aspiring screenwriters? They can't be "discovered" if they stay at home, but they can't write their next big screenplay if they go out. That's why you see them crowding around the Starbucks and Coffee Beans plaguing nearly every street corner, trying to strike some self-imagined balance of trendiness and importance.
If more shops shut down their WiFi, that would further concentrate these pretentious jerks in those shops that still offer a connection. Maybe that's not such a bad thing--you'd know which places to avoid. There's nothing wrong with spending a half hour in your local coffee shop having a drink and a snack while checking up on news or whatever floats your online boat. But really, who has nothing better to do with their day than to spend all of it huddled over their laptop, browsing the web, in a noisy and crowded coffee shop? I see students use coffee shops like it was an annex to their dorm room--wearing pajamas, headphones on, textbooks sprawled everywhere. That's just beyond sad.
Or instead of the "you have x minutes left" counters that get displayed in a web page on some hotspots, have a "more coffee" button, that places your order at the till to be delivered to you at your table. I like this idea.
D-link used to sell a product that was ADSL router, small till-roll printer and embedded software that managed printing out each user a unique access code, and a no-cat-auth style login web page for access. Cost was under 200 dollars as I recall.
I'd imagine as well as the points in the rest of this thread another reason for wifi decline is a) the economy means that any business cost that doesn't bring in a profit gets squeezed, and also the risk of an unidentified customer doing something naughty with the internet connection and the coffee shop being prosecuted for it.
I'm not going to care, as a business owner, if ultra cheapass wants to mooch wifi. I don't care about the wifi. I care about the sloth who isn't making me any money taking up a chair or a sofa or a table for hours on end.
Paying customers walk in, see that the wifi slugs are taking up all the places to sit, and just leave. That is the problem. It's not about the wifi. It's about getting the douches who think all businesses are charity operations designed to give them what they want for free that are the problem.
Look - security is a pyramid. At the peak of the pyramid are like national spying organizations, and at the bottom are literally animals. You usually only need to stop part of the problem to be effective. A doorknob stops feral cats or raccoons from getting in, but not criminals. A padlock stops hooligans, but actual criminals can break it. A deadbolt is better, but can still be picked by higher-end criminals. Vault doors and lasers stop all but the most professional of criminals or spies in their tracks.
But I don't need to worry about "what if Michael Westen or James Bond wants to raid my cash register?" because the odds of that are so low, I'm just not a target as a coffee shop. So if all I've got is some expresso machines and a few bucks in the register, I get a normal lock and some insurance, not armed guards.
This is the technology equivalent. I'm not worried about "what if he spoofs his MAC" or "what if he's war-driving from a remote controlled helicopter". I can solve 95% of my problem (people mooching off me) for 10% of the cost/effort, so I'll probably stop there.
I'm not going to care, as a business owner, if ultra cheapass wants to mooch wifi. I don't care about the wifi. I care about the sloth who isn't making me any money taking up a chair or a sofa or a table for hours on end.
I'm not a business owner, but a very regular customer for a local Starbucks in my town. I use to go there after my daughter's violin lessons and have a treat, coffee, and some nice father-daughter time while we ate.
This was before a group of scrap-bookers decided that Starbucks was their personal workshop. They take up almost the entire store and parking lot, bring in all their equipment, and (from what I've seen) buy only a few drinks between the group.
I've stopped going to the store and take my girls someplace else. So your moral is true: it isn't wifi, it is the free loaders who have no consideration for other patrons that cost the business owner. At least if I have to have a coffee, there's the drive through...something the little shops probably don't have.
I love the sound of distortion in the morning -- webcommando