131–140 of 233 posts
I just search coffee on google maps
if anybody is in Redmond, WA and love good, modern espresso, i highly recommend Five Stones. they have single origin espresso that's almost as good as what i make at home ;)
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This is going to depend a lot on location. Coffee chains are able to support this sort of behavior because the many customers that drop $4 in one minute on their morning commute, are subsidizing the few customers that pay $4 for six hours of seating and wifi. Assuming you open your cafe on a viable commuter path, you can take advantage of this subsidy and your economics can work out. You can improve your economics ev…
most folks here are overthinking/armchairing the problem. coffee shop owners have their economics figured out or they wouldn't stay in business. cafes (like the dozens near me) are perfectly capable of sustaining their business with a blend of folks grabbing coffee to go and others sitting for hours. you don't need to institute limits, subscriptions, nudges, or any other customer-hostile action. just price well, and…
In most competitive markets you cannot compete (i.e. not lose money) when you have costs that a competitor does not have the bear. For instance, if 20% of your customers are money losers, a competitor can cut those customers out and make a higher return. Everything gets priced in. So that means that person can charge X% less for coffee, or pay X% more for real estate, or have better coffee or better service etc.
Ignoring the trade off doesn't make it go away
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We need more coworking spaces with cafes. Cafés weren't designed to be coworking spaces.
Recent ones are.
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Historically, cafes were social forums where people gathered for hours at a time to read and converse. Maximizing absolute profit by optimizing customer throughput is the modern take. But that’s not what cafes are for and so you should not feel bad for forcing owners to understand their business and optimize for both profitability and the cafe experience.
I would love a return to that historic ideal, though it just wouldn't be economical on its own. It would end up being a loss-making add-on to some larger enterprise.. perhaps a bookstore or a locally funded community centre? I'm reminded of Ziferblat [1] and other similar "anti-cafes" [2]. They shut down their local one here though, apparently due to not being able to meet the cost of skyrocketing commercial rents. […
The usual killer, as you've identified, isn't people sitting at the tables but the rents. Possibly you could do a quite "successful" cafe as a non-profit that owns the building it is sitting in.
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Interesting idea, but probably illegal in most places unfortunately.
Not necessarily. Loads of buildings are faraday cages by accident. I know my old school gym completely blocked cell signal due to how it was built
This is cool. Reminds me.. I have always liked the idea of opening a cafe (who hasn't !?) but I'd struggle with the modern behaviour of peeps sitting for hours taking up a plug + wifi in exchange for ~£$4. Hugely uneconomical for independents. Good-faith customers aware of the economic burden of their behaviour are a VERY rare breed.. So I quite like (/ethically hate) the idea of creating scarcities in order to influ…
Could you make each purchase include an hour of wifi? It wouldn’t be too hard to set up and I don’t think people would mind. Or after an hour keep providing wifi but put up a guilt screen explaining that you have costs etc.
I think the reality of the situation is that it's WAY less of a problem than people make it out to be; most every coffee shop I've ever been in has been mostly empty.
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Not necessarily. Loads of buildings are faraday cages by accident. I know my old school gym completely blocked cell signal due to how it was built
Many big-box stores effectively block most if not all cell signal; you might not notice because Home Depot provides free wifi.
Honest question: How do cafe owners make the best of workers using their cafe as a work place? I've heard it referred to as the "laptop hobo" problem: customers that come and buy a small coffee and take up a table for 4+ hours. How have you seen cafe owners handle this well so that they sustain the business and avoid the freeloader problem? Sometimes I see "No Laptops" signs in cafes, but I'm sure there are better ap…
Although, that plan is faulty now, given that I could easily get 6-8 hours of work out of my Macbook, thanks to the M1 chips.
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Many big-box stores effectively block most if not all cell signal; you might not notice because Home Depot provides free wifi.
I assume it's unintentional though right?
(Costco being the only one I've been in that didn't provide store-wide free wifi.)