A local coffee shop is trying to fix the Achilles heel of that business model: loafers who order one cup of Joe and lounge around all day, hogging tables that paying customers might want to use.
It’s a particularly acute problem for most coffee shops during lunch and dinner hours.
Ellwood Thompson’s coffee shop is trying to keep the quasi-freeloaders at bay by shutting off the wireless Internet during certain hours.
The wireless will be off from 4:30 to 9 p.m. It’s possible customers will be able to pull off other wireless signals.
An employee working behind the counter said that the shop is going to try to be more of a restaurant.
I’m curious to see how this works. I’ve been in there a handful of times, and there are indeed a lot of loafers with laptops (I am one of them). But for as long as there have been coffee shops, there have been customers who spend hours with a book, or chatting with friends. This won’t discourage them.
Check back in a few weeks when RBS has a follow-up report.
A local coffee shop is trying to fix the Achilles heel of that business model: loafers who order one cup of Joe and lounge around all day, hogging tables that paying customers might want to use.
It’s a particularly acute problem for most coffee shops during lunch and dinner hours.
Ellwood Thompson’s coffee shop is trying to keep the quasi-freeloaders at bay by shutting off the wireless Internet during certain hours.
The wireless will be off from 4:30 to 9 p.m. It’s possible customers will be able to pull off other wireless signals.
An employee working behind the counter said that the shop is going to try to be more of a restaurant.
I’m curious to see how this works. I’ve been in there a handful of times, and there are indeed a lot of loafers with laptops (I am one of them). But for as long as there have been coffee shops, there have been customers who spend hours with a book, or chatting with friends. This won’t discourage them.
Check back in a few weeks when RBS has a follow-up report.
I find this very annoying and trivial. I understand their need to find business, but this puts a nasty twist on it. Just the notice of cutting wifi hours will keep me from going at all. Who has time to keep up with what hours their wifi will be on!