Tech-Unfriendly Cafes Say No Kindles Allowed

theodp writes "At the risk of pulling-a-Groupon, I have a dream that one day my children will not be judged by their e-readers, but by the content of their character. The NY Times' Virginia Heffernan complains that many indie New York City cafes now heavily restrict, or ban outright, the use of Kindles, Nooks and iPads. Evidently, she says, too many coffee shops have had their ambience wrecked when itinerant word processors with laptops turn the tables into office space. Full-dress computers are one thing, says Heffernan, but banning devices the size of books is going too far, and it's anathema to the character and history of cafes. By contrast, Starbucks offers free, one-click, unlimited wireless service to their patrons, making it in Heffernan's eyes 'a flawed franchise that is squarely in the public good.'"

Comments

It's a free country

[Relyx]

Those cafes are quite free to ban eReaders, iPads and the like. Whether it will actually be enforced is another question entirely. Even if the management comes down hard, there is nothing stopping their customers going elsewhere.

Re:It's a free country

[confused one]

You've hit the nail on the head. If Cafe X bans the tablets then they'll see their customers walk down the street to Cafe Y, which welcomes them. There's nothing that says you have to do business with the cafe that bans the devices.

Re:It's a free country

[thomasdz]

Yes, you can read a book, but at MY cafe, only books that have been handwritten on velum are allowed... I don't allow any of them high-falootin' printing press -produced monstrosities. I demand my customers use the written word as God meant it to be used... produced by monks.
 

Re:It's a free country

[Dcnjoe60]

Or cafe X will see an uptick in business as their tables turn quicker. Either way, it's the free market economy at its best.

(Side note: this only works because in a place like NYC, there is a lot of competition. If you lived in a small town with only one coffeeshop, then this would be a completely different deal. (I'm looking at you Time Warner Cable.))

But even in a small town, the store owner would be in their right to not allow kindles and other devices. A small town, probably has a smaller coffee shop, which probably has fewer seats that need to be turned over just as quickly as in NYC to be profitable. I've lived in a town of 30,000 that had a Panera's coffee shop. It was next to impossible to eat their during normal lunch hours because of their free wifi and all of the college kids sitting around on their laptops with a cup of coffee for hours on end. $2 for a cup of coffee for 3 or 4 hours of internet wasn't a bad deal for the kids, but it sure impacted business for the store.

Their solution? During the lunch hours 11:00 - 1:30, you could only use laptops in one relatively small section of the place. They even had free internet terminals at some of the tables if you wanted. It turns out that the same amount of people were using the internet, but instead of one per table or booth, they all shared the tables and booths in that area. In that way, the store could still serve it's paying customers.

The whole point of the above story is that it impacts even small towns.

No one's saying it isn't

[guyminuslife]

That's not the point.

Re:No one's saying it isn't

[Rude Turnip]

It's a cop-out and intellectual laziness to just say the cafe/shop owners can do whatever they want--we already know that. The discussion of weighing the benefits versus the disadvantages is nonetheless an interesting one. And, perhaps such discussions will give cafe owners food for thought in making their business decisions.

Re:No one's saying it isn't

[Dcnjoe60]

What about disabled people with their large clumsy wheelchairs? Or non-white people? Or Women? What about Muslims? What they have one down the street?

I know the Nazis burned the books, so modern fascists burn Kindles?

Still feel like a free country?

That's a stupid argument. For one, disabled people in wheelchars, non-blacks, woment, Muslims, etc, have rights that are enforced under law. Nobody has the right to read a kindle or use a laptop or cell phone wherever they want to.

Second, the coffee shop, being privately owned is perfectly within its right to say if you don't wear shoes or shirt we will not serve you. If you smoke, we will not serve you and yes, if you use a kindle, we will not serve you.

The said coffee shops in the articles are doing this for very good business reasons. They have found that when people camp out at a table or booth for hours working on their laptop or reading a kindle, they don't get much revenue. They way the potential for lost revenue by kindle customers getting upset and going elsewhere with the actual loss they were experiencing.

If you don't like it, you are free to frequent other coffee shops or even start your own that caters to kindle users. That's what it means to live in a free country.

Re:No one's saying it isn't

[Runaway1956]

Alright, I won't cop out. Cafe owners are in business for the same reason most other people are in business: to make a living, or money. Having been a truck driver for years, I spent MANY an hour in truck stop diners, reading the news, reading a book, or just killing time in some other manner. Uncountable hours. But - I wouldn't DREAM of sitting in the diner during their lunch rush hour, taking up space, while I read another chapter or six of Asimov's Foundation. As friendly and chummy as most truck stop waitresses, managers, and owners are toward truck driver's needs - THEY NEED THAT SPACE at rush hour! The average cafe desperately needs all the space available during meal times. And, between meals, many cafes are frantically busy with cleaning up, and preparing for the next onslaught. That is to say, unless the owner makes a policy of welcoming the idle into his establishment, his business space is BUSINESS space. Of course, I know how valuable it is to court those idle people with time to kill, reading a book. Make them welcome today, let them slurp coffee as long as they want, and they'll come back when they are hungry. Some places, anyway. All the same - if you want them to welcome your little distractions, you should take the time to educate them about how your distraction might benefit them in some way. I mean - do you stop at that cafe 3 or more times a week? Are the waitresses familiar with you? Have you ever TALKED to the manager? No, no, and no? Well - this seems to to indicate that you have little, if any value to the store owner. Hey, I'll bet that if you eat at the same restaurant every week, at least twice, the manager WILL remember you before long. Then, ban or no ban, if you pull your reader out for thirty minutes during non-rush hours, he ain't gonna say a WORD to you about it. In short - stop expecting a free ride. You gotta give a little to get a little in this world.

Do they ban books?

[hawguy]

As long as they ban books, magazines and other reading materials that's a good policy - I hate going to my local coffee shop for a quick drink and snack only to find that half of the tables are taken over by 3 person study groups who pushed 4 tiny tables together to make room for their books and papers, or rows of people on their laptops (some working, some just idling browsing the 'net, and that guy in the corner browsing porn).

But to ban a Kindle or Nook just because it's electronic seems like a stretch -- browsing is not a joy on either of those platforms, so it's not like someone is going to be spending hours answering his work email. Though he may spend hours reading an eBook, just like he would do with a paper book if he didn't have a Kindle.

[citation needed]

[StDoodle]

Now, I'm not saying I doubt that there are cafes banning such devices. But cafes -- especially indie establishments -- have a long history of having their individual, quirky policies. Is this one or two cafes that have banned said devices, and only said devices? Have the cafes in question banned all extended table-takeover "loitering" (for whatever that means in such a place)? I just find it rather difficult to get worked up over a post with so little information behind it. (Ok, a small amount of info on cafe history... but without the present situation clarified, what good is that?)

I wish there was a cafe...

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

where I could use my soldering iron and dremel. Also, the walls would be lined with component and fastener bins.

Re:I wish there was a cafe...

[wertarbyte]

There is a location here in the city of Essen, germany that resembles your idea: http://www.unperfekthaus.de/e/ It's a building housing an interesting combination of a restauraunt, art studio, electronic laboratory, stage etc. You can use most of the equipment for free, provided that you do it openly and thus allow spectators, each paying an entry fee of 5,5 EUR which includes an unlimited supply of coffee and soft drinks. Quite nice for hanging out, learning for an exam or soldering together some new devices. Of course, WLAN connectivity is available as well :-)

Indie = Pretentious now?

[newcastlejon]

I can understand people wanting to avoid the sound of spiders scratching behind earbuds, or bright flashing colours in the corner of one's eye but why ban silent, monochromatic book replacements? This sort of café sounds to me like a gathering place of pompous poseurs (possibly goateed) sat there with tattered - by their previous owners - copies of Milne spouting neo-luddite claptrap.

Here endeth the rant. If these places want to alienate paying customers then that's their right; it's just a shame there probably won't be another article on their inevitable going out of business. Of course, collecting all this sort just makes it that much easier to avoid them, so I'm at best ambivalent about the whole thing.

P.S. I figure if the only source is a paywalled opinion piece then it shouldn't count as news...

Turn off the wi-fi

[qwerty shrdlu]

If they don't want these people hanging out, why go to the trouble of luring them in?

Their cafe, their choice...

[Neil_Brown]

If it's made clear before I parted with money for a drink that something non-obvious is prohibited, then I've no problem at all - I can simply take my patronage elsewhere.

If it's only after I've bought a drink and sat down to read that I'm told, then I'm likely to be less impressed, but, at the end of the day, it's not really something I'm going to worry too much about - at worst, if I really do need to read something, I can walk out.

Since I tend to get a bottle of water, and maybe something to eat, I probably haven't lost much either, since I'll take them with me, but I could understand why someone who's not using a takeaway cup might be loathe to leave their (often expensive) coffee behind, but, I do try not to get riled over a few pounds if I can avoid it. Life is too short.

could they name one cafe?

[boguslinks]

Would it have been too much trouble for the author of the Times piece to actually name a place that is prohibiting Kindles? She managed to get in her Charbucks plug without naming any of the villains.

Re:Look past the device...

[Anonymous Psychopath]

I'd wager it's not the device... or the table space that a laptop takes up... It's way more physical than that...

It's about CHAIRS and WIFI.

No one wants to go sit in a coffee shop and when you get there, there are no seats because people have 'set up shop' and are there for the long haul. They want you to enjoy your coffee, and LEAVE. Same goes for WIFI. What once was a sales feature to get you INTO the store: Free WiFi, is now something that KEEPS you in the store, but doesn't make any more money for the shops. How many people drink cup after cup of coffee the entire 2-3 hours they're sitting there? nope. they got one $2 cup of coffee, and then tie up the seats and the wifi for hours. And their WiFi is probably over taxed because of it...

Books don't consume WiFi, and most people don't read a book for hours.

Your entire argument assumes that the largest coffee chain in the US can't do simple math. *$ offers free, unlimited wifi for a reason. What do you think that reason is?

[[WP:WEASEL]] {{citeneeded}}

[Animats]

"Many indie New York City cafes now heavily restrict, or ban outright, the use of Kindles, Nooks and iPads."

That sentence should have been followed by the names of some cafes, and an interview with an owner. But no. So it's just blithering.

The Times is slipping.