My neighborhood cafe has no real kitchen but offers baked goods & other snacks supplied by various vendors. There’s also beer & wine. And sometimes a food truck at supper time.
Often I’ll get off at the bus stop after work & check: Is there a table free for a drink or snack? Or is the place filled with silent folk tapping away on their high end laptops? I’ll use the WiFi to check for updates on my phone or for the extra Kindle features, so I it’s handy; but I’m not averse to talking. The ones busy keyboarding don’t talk…
I’d suggest they immediately stop anybody bringing in their own food & drink. And try to ensure the surfing folks pay their share. I have arrived, looked around–& left because there was no room.
If you have a handle on who the problem players are and you’re sure they’re not bringing in more customers, it should be easy enough to just ask them to leave. It’s free and it won’t alienate the customers, and it’s embarrassing enough that they probably won’t come back.
I think two of the four most persistent moochers will leave peacefully. The others tend to make a stink unless a certain large black nerd is doing the asking.
I agree with Maxie; I often wonder how coffee shops stay in business. When I take my computer to one to work, I always pay my rent for my seat and wiifi by buying an expensive coffee and lunch. If I’m not buying lunch, I make sure I leave before the lunch rush sets in. Common decency. Also, I’ve known people who own small businesses, and it is tough going, especially when people use the cafe as their office. (Side note: one guru on financial frugality used a favorite cafe as an office, advised people to do the same. S/he almost put the place out of business with what amounts to selfishness and greed on her/his part, lack of consideration for the owner and other customers,)
As others have said, the public library provides internet for job seekers, as well as other useful resources. Amy is lucky that Maxie helps subsidize the place, but if she want to continue having a place for musicians and artists to share their work, she has to have room for the paying customers and make the place work.
First, cover the electric outlets with flat plates. (Maybe leave 1 next to a very uncomfortable table). That will limit everyone to what ever their battery can handle.
Second, get rid of outside food. Or at least find a humorous sign that points out how ignorant it is to bring food into a restaurant… Maybe something like, we all need to make a living. We make our living by selling food. If you want to just use our furniture, please make a donation at the cash register.
I wouldn’t get rid of the wifi all together, for some people that may be their only access for job hunting or other important things (like accessing assistance).
Contrariwise, Maxie is lucky she has Amy to do the cooking.
I’ve sort-of used a coffeehouse as an office, particularly when doing first interviews with job seekers. When I do that, though, I always buy the interviewee something to eat and drink, and of course my own coffee addiction is such that it’s certain I’ll pay for my own chair. And that’s never for more than a morning anyway.
Geez, where is this coffee shop? Inside a state penitentiary? It doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of business sense for a low-volume small business to spend money on something that they can easily do for free, and if your waitstaff isn’t comfortable asking troublemakers to leave, I don’t think they’re cut out for retail work. Receipt system or not, booting people who make other patrons uncomfortable is just going to have to happen occasionally.
Cafes are kind of a weird business, in that the product that they sell isn’t really the primary reason people go there. They’re at least as much a place to hang out and do work as they are a place to get overpriced coffee.
If you insist that people only stay as long as they’re actively consuming something they bought there, you’re not really running a cafe, you’re running a restaurant. If your going to run a cafe, I think you need to have some tolerance for people being in your store without them actively making you money.
On the other hand, obviously you need people to buy stuff or there isn’t any point. Pretty much every place I’ve been to splits the difference and asks that you buy at least one thing before using the wi-fi, but then lets you stay on it as long as you like.
You’re making a big and unreasonable assumption about what they might be telling their friends. Maybe their friends want more than just playing World of Warcraft, and want a friendly place to eat where they won’t get kicked out too quickly.
I’ll give you an analogy. I am probably biggest user of residential Internet services in my neighborhood, so much that my ISP’s security dept called me up once and claimed I was violating our agreement by using an excessive amount of data transfer per month and WTF was I doing, anyway? But guess who potential residential customers come to for advice on what ISP to use? Me. I dare say I have supplied them with 20 customers over the past few years, all of whom are immensely profitable. Few of them would have gone with the ISP if I had not recommended it.
It doesn’t pay to tick off your biggest fans in businesses where word of mouth is your biggest advertising.
I side with Maxie. Her restrictions are actually pretty generous, and entirely reasonable. People that need free internet can go to the library. Table space at a private business is for paying customers.
The biggest problem is lost sales during lunch. Moochers might be a net boon (looks busy, must be good) during off hours, but the 11:00-2:00 is second only to breakfast (and fast breakfast take-out) as money making time.
In addition, a folksy "We enjoy being able to provide WiFi for our customer’s enjoyment while consuming their food and beverage.
But really folks, we are a business - we need sales to pay our bills so, please
NO OUTSIDE FOOD OR BEVERAGES. Thank you!
Explain that WiFi will be down at some point between 10:00 and 11:00 each day while we do our banking (or some bullshit) or maybe no explanation.
When the paying customers leave and only the moochers remain, pull the plug and leave it unplugged until they move on.
The ones who can afford laptops can afford dial-up.
The ones which really need access can go to the library.
If you have 10 tables and 7 of them are moochers, you will not be in business long.
Isn’t it actually a health code violation in some places to allow outside food and drink into your establishment? Or is my memory just crap these days?
You sure wouldn’t want a health code violation fine. Or gawd forbid somebody gets sick at the cafe rom someoutside food and the shark lawyers smell money.
Actually, the solution is simple. Just make it really crappy wi-fi. Good enough for email and maybe cruise cnn.com or something like that, but too slow for video, gaming or anything else.
Pretty soon the clientele will be back to people who go to coffee shops for coffee.
Maxie proposes that people who spend under $10 will have three hours of free Wifi. Amy says, what about people who need the free Wifi to look for work? But I say, isn’t three hours quite a bit of time if you’re looking for work, anyway?
I understand where Maxie is coming from, but I don’t think the proposed approach is a good one. I voted with Amy, even though I don’t agree with her reasoning.
Do they have connection speed limited? A good first step, if they don’t.
One slightly further afield consideration: the type of code-entry system they’re talking about…in my experience, they kinda suck. “Captive portal” wifi systems don’t work well on certain devices, aren’t intuitive for a lot of people, and often have issues.
If wifi use IS heavy there, there’s a nonzero chance complaints and headaches from implementing a captive portal system are going to add up, and result in them abandoning the system and eating the cost, while having irritated a bunch of customers.
If at all possible, I’d say they just just put up a couple signs explaining NO outside food and requesting a minimum purchase for use of wifi. If moochers continue, point to the posted sign and smile. If they don’t get the picture, ask 'em to leave
I mostly agree with Maxie. Her restrictions are reasonable. If Angie wants to help people who don’t have access, then she can make a donation to a public library. Please note that the public library has time limits on its internet usage, too…or at least mine does. In fact, I’d suggest that the wifi code for a small coffee is not valid during the lunch rush at all. So if someone comes in at 10:30, buys a small coffee, and then expects to sit and surf until 1:30 without buying anything else, that person will be disappointed.
Ending the free wifi might cost them some moochers, but it probably won’t cost them any actual profitable customers. Yes, a cafe is more than a place to drink coffee and possibly eat…but if the cafe isn’t making money on some people, then those people need to find other places to hang out. If I go into a cafe and can’t find an empty spot, then I’m likely to turn around and leave. Having moochers at the tables is not necessarily a good thing.
In retail (and despite what Amy would like for this place to be, it IS a retail establishment), some customers are going to be profitable, and some people who walk through the doors are going to cost the business money. A company that tries to accommodate the people who cost the company money will end up with mostly moochers, and few profitable customers.
I do like the idea of having the wifi shut down during the lunch rush. Table turnover is vital to a restaurant during the rushes, and even though I enjoy a bit of wifi myself (but I can stop any time I want to!), I can get along without it. I’d be willing to bet that just shutting down the wifi during the lunch rush, or even just slowing it down during that time, will make a big difference.
I picked the third option, because while I think Max is right and this is reasonable, I think Amy is right that it will drive away some customers.
The issue I would think of is group meetings. When I was a student, it was a common enough to say “let’s me at X”, and we’d all get together and work there. If half the group is buying, it’s worth it to let the other half not buy anything. If 4 of 5 group members would buy something, but the fifth member suggested somewhere else where he doesn’t have to buy something, that’s a loss. However, if the entire group shows up and nobody buys anything, that’s problematic.
I think M&A should do the following: whatever all the other coffeeshops and restaurants in a 10 block radius do. If they’re the only one with free wifi, they are the only ones with moochers. If they’re the only ones with restrictions, they will drive away a lot more people. If there’s no differentiation, then all is fine and all their competition has the same problems.
Then you’d probably lose my business. I can conduct business during lunch with a computer, or at least use it to catch up on news (I used to do that with a newspaper, but they’re second rate now). If I can’t access Wifi, I will go somewhere else. Lots of restaurants (most of them) have free access, even MacDonald’s.