This article feels is one of the very few cases where i read something online and totally feels weird to me due to where i am from. In Greece coffee shops are really mainly places to hang out and staying for hours on a single coffee is pretty much normal and expected. There is a huge "coffee culture" here. Me and my friends would go for a coffee at 6pm (or later 7pm, due to jobs) and often leave at 11pm or sometimes…
I'm Greek too and I had the same thoughts. Specifically that it's perfectly possible to have a profitable business while expecting your customers to take over four or five seats for several hours for the price of a single coffee per head- because all the cafés I went to when I was in Greece did exactly that and they stayed in business for ever (most are still open like 12 years after I emigrated). The difference is p…
I have two very good friends that own cafes here (which seem to work similar to what you are describing) and he hates when someone uses a table for hours on end and ends up paying one euro or something, even groups. He always told me that his best customers are the ones that come in, have their coffee, pay the euro, don't care about receipt and leave after 10 minutes. Those are the ones that keep him in business (and yes, tax on a 1 euro coffee isn't much, but multiply by easily 500 a day, and it starts to add up)