I liked the article as it recognizes that you can't just freeload on space. One thing I would suggest that you consider is the idea of karma. As a writer there are a lot of people that want to use your writing without paying, and in many ways they probably can. You can engage in a type of "paying it forward" particularly if you are working at a locally owned coffee shop. It will be hard to create hard rules- a lot of it is going to be karma.
Wow, the article supposes _much_ more time is 'bought' than I do.
My rule of thumb is if I'm finished consuming my purchases (consumed at a 'reasonable' rate), I can stay as long as the coffee shop has at least one other free table.
This makes a lot of sense to me as a guard against being a complete jerk, but I tend to think that even then you should probably be buying something periodically.
Particularly if you work in a coffee shop because it's what you prefer, you should be paying a 'fair' rate for it, which I really don't think can possibly be less than $5/hr or so.
A coffee shop I used to work at semi-regularly [1] had a sticker discreetly placed next to the power plug, under the table, requesting that you spend around $5/hr if you're going to stay for an extended time. Seemed like a reasonable rule of thumb. I also like that it was done more as a "friendly reminder" / request, not in a heavy-handed manner, like the places that give one-time-use wifi codes that expire every hour.
I guess I might frequent busier places - I don't think that with my 'rule' I often go over your limit either.
Having said that, if I were a coffee shop owner, if the place felt empty I would rather have people sitting in it even if they're not continually buying, just to keep up the atmosphere.
I think this also varies based on how busy/crowded the coffee shop is. I don't feel too guilty camping when half the tables are empty, but there are many downtown coffee places that are near capacity most of the time.
At any rate, I'm enough of a coffee fiend that I get a new beverage every hour or two anyway. :)
Hogging an entire table with books and a backpack and notes all over is a pet peeve of mine. Especially a larger table that could fit four people being taken up by one person.
Depending on what part of the country you are in, people will share a single small table. I've been places where every open seat is taken and people are sharing, and I've been to places where a person will become confrontational if you ask to share their table - even if it's a four person table!
Another complaint (if I'm allowed to complain about 'free' wifi) is that a lot of places have a slow connection, many AT&T locations seem to be limited to T1 speeds, and the router has bad QoS or bandwidth sharing. So 'that guy' who's streaming YouTube all morning, or updating Windows, or downloading 30 apps from the App store is just ruining the connection for everyone else. Once I tried running 'bundle install' and after 45 minutes, just gave up and went home.
For me also I take into consideration how much the server has to do for me. For instance if they give free refills and have to come around to my table for it, or even just stand behind the bar and refill when I come up, I will leave an additional tip for them
This is really about the lack of good shared hacker/working spaces. The nearest one is miles from where I live, not convenient to get to via public transportation and expensive. Meanwhile, Starbucks is a short walk down the street for $1.50 per cup of drip coffee. The demand is there, but the supply isn't. Starbucks fills that niche.
I agree, the freelance working space market must be extremely ripe right now, I wonder why supply has been so slow to increase? It should be obvious that the demand is very high just by visiting most wifi cafes, looking around, and seeing all of the freelancers and office-refugees.
I think because it's actually a pretty high risk proposition for property owners. It means a lot of unknown people coming and going through commercial (not retail) space and all the insurance, theft risk, vandalism risk kinds of concerns that come with that for a landlord. Usually in a city with a growing and vibrant tech industry less risky tenants can be gotten who will probably pay more.
Definitely. Even when coworking spaces exist they're typically pretty expensive for what you get--which is usually just a desk, fast internet, and maybe free coffee. Bring the price down a little, or offer daily passes for $10-$20 (even that's pretty high considering you're competing with a $3 latte all-day-pass at Starbucks).
Alternatively I always suggest to people that they work at their local library. The Chicago suburbs for example have a superb library system, and nowadays you can even bring in closed drinks at some of them. Internet is fast, it's quiet by definition, and there's usually a fine amount of human activity around to keep you from feeling like you're alone in an office building.
Would it be possible to create a space with a similarly casual and welcoming environment and charge hourly drop-in rates? Perhaps for a more broad audience than a typical co-working or hacker space. Something street-level perhaps that could attract walk-ins. What could it offer that a coffee shop can't?
The co-working spaces around Seattle offer a dedicated (professional looking) space for meetings wired up for tele/videoconferencing. Hell, even a coffee shop could offer those, with proper reservations and a small deposit. Sure, the ones here have "quiet rooms", but those aren't reservable, to my knowledge.
The one I use[1] is startup-oriented, located right downtown (which is effectively the nexus of transit in this city), and has drop-in desks for $125/mo and full time desks for $275/mo, which I think is pretty reasonable. I definitely feel for people don't have something like it, it's pretty nice.
Here's the rule: Buy a drink when you walk in. Then don't worry about it as long as tables are free. Because you're not displacing any customers. Once you glance around and notice the place is getting kinda crowded, walk up and buy another drink if yours is empty. That way you're not costing them any business.
There's a Starbucks in NYC where there's often a guy with a Mac laptop wrapped in newspaper and a line of empty drinks on his table and beside the window. I wonder how much he spends per year and how much time he spends at that Starbucks. Then I want to see what he's working on and how much Starbucks money he could have used for an actual office (though I doubt he wants one).
I've often thought about this as well, but I don't really want to keep buying drinks and snacks and load up on the calories. (And I can only drink so many low-calorie plain coffees without shaking...) There should be a way of paying shops for my use of the table space. Then everybody is happy and I don't gain weight. Maybe that would break the "folksy ambiance" for their other customers, though...
I hack at a coffee shop with some frequency, and have built a sufficient rapport with the staff that I feel I can get honest answers out of a few of them.
Starbucks aims to be the "third place". Home, Work, Starbucks. That's what _they_ want, they want to be inviting, they want to have good wifi, new stores should have very convenient power. So it's not like they didn't plan on this happening. But they do have numbers to meet.
- They do complain about people who buy a small coffee then site for five hours. (so keep buying)
- They seem less concerned with what you're buying, more concerned with you doing it with some frequency (unless it's the cheapest thing on the menu)
- If you have a loyalty card, your free refill appear the same to them as if you bought something, so don't feel bad there.
- They hate people who shout into skype, listen to music through speakers, or take over multiple seats (just as much as you do)
- Leave 10 minutes before closing.
- Tip.
I think there's also work that cafés can do to better manage their space. I look at patrons in two camps: campers and drinkers.
Campers show up laptop and stay for a long time.
Drinkers want to come in, buy a coffee, sit down and drink it, maybe with a friend, then leave.
Having seating targeted at both groups helps them make effective use of the space. My old starbucks had nice bar-style seating facing a window. Narrow ledge big enough for a paperback and a coffee, not big enough for a laptop. This fit in a lot of patrons per square foot (compared to a full table & chair). "Campers" could fill up appropriate seating, then "drinkers" could show up and still see great seats for themselves. Drinkers who came early often saw the nice seats by the window and filled up there first, leaving more tables for campers.
My current coffee shop only has seating that works for campers. So the place can fill up with the laptop crowd, a drinker can walk in then walk back out. Or it can fill up with Drinkers, and lose campers the same way.
>- If you have a loyalty card, your free refill appear the same to them as if you bought something, so don't feel bad there.
The way Starbucks structures their loyalty program really says a lot about what behavior they want out of their customers, if we're to assume that a loyalty program's purpose is to incentivize customers to behave in a manner that's more profitable to Starbucks.
You get a loyalty point for every paid transaction. Doesn't matter if you buy a $1.50 bottled water or $100 on lattes for your entire team -- your standing in the program is based on simply how often you show up. There's a really low bar (5 transactions) to get free refills, which seems to encourage you to come into a Starbucks and linger for a while.
So they definitely seem perfectly happy with you coming in and spending a bunch of time there -- so long as you do it often!
I don't disagree with your comment, but I want to note:
> Starbucks aims to be the "third place". Home, Work, Starbucks. That's what _they_ want
They're aiming to be your third place, the tension here is that it's becoming a second place for many. That places a different burden on the a coffeeshop than being a third place does.
The Mill and Ritual Roasters in SF are both famous for not providing public access to their power outlets in order to encourage people to camp elsewhere. The Mill doesn't even have public Wi-Fi.
Can someone explain to me why you prefer working in a crowded, noisy cafe rather than in the comfort of your own home/the park/some other comfortable venue?
Whenever I went to Starbucks, the chairs were barely comfortable enough to sit on for ten minutes, there's no way I could sit there for hours.
Ah, I guess it's the different culture, then. In Greece, we consider talking to strangers intruding. Not that it's impolite or anything, people just don't do it much.
My simple rules when working from coffee shops:
1. Don't take up space when the place is full
(when the place is empty they should like to have you in)
2. Order reasonably - not just one coffee for 2 hours. Get at least 3 items for a few hours session, preferably also food
3. Be nice and over generous with tips
The local coffee shop I frequent encourages the regulars to stay as long as they want, no "drink minimum" or anything. Having lots of people sitting around is good for business. They've gone out of their way to put in power outlets and benches/tables. There's even one out on the deck we can use if we want.
They keep the music kinda loud also to encourage a lively atmosphere. It has a real community feel to it. I can trace probably 80% of the money I've made in the last eight years to connections I've made here.
I presume this strongly depends on the location -- a slightly marginal location where the natural state is not particularly crowded would have a strong incentive to pull in more customers, even campers, to give it a vibe of "the place to be." Such locations probably have lower rents as well, and can afford larger spaces.
However places in prime locations and densely populated neighborhoods can be packed 95% of the time, whatever they do. For them, the tradeoffs are very different...
Here in Amsterdam, NL the CoffeeCompany stores allow up to one hour of WiFi access per receipt. So you get a drink, the receipt contains a wifi password that will last you one hour. Need more? Get another drink.
...or grab a receipt someone left at your table. I've seen this happen.
I think this is worth figuring out for your local shop. But Starbucks!? Perhaps I'm the only one who doesn't think our top priority should be having more empathy for a billion dollar company.
I think my dream would be to own a hacker-friendly coffeeshop as my own office. I would run a nice coffee place with fast wifi, lots of power outlets, and big tables, serving coffee, snacks, and simple meals. Maybe also sell some accessories like batteries, stationery, spare chargers, earbuds, etc.
There would be a full office in the back for me and my team to work together in. It'd be the place to meet when we needed to collaborate, but otherwise we'd be free to come out and work in the public area. The coffeeshop needs to make just enough money to run the whole company (the shop itself plus minimum living expenses for the non-coffeeshop employees). That would give us the freedom to work on whatever projects we want at our own pace.
We'd run community events like hackathons, game jams, lan parties, etc. Basically try to build up a public place where people would love to come work and maybe meet others to collaborate with. If the coffee isn't paying the bills, maybe we could charge a membership fee for powerusers, or maybe operate at a loss, if I have a sufficiently successful project that can pay for it.
Sounds awesome. There was a place in SF called Coffee + Power Workclub. They closed before I had a chance to go through, but as I understand, they were a normal startup that invited freelancers to work in their lobby.
Manga "cafes" in Japan often use a similar model, where you pay per hour and there's a range of free drinks/snacks (plus more substantial food you can pay extra for), and of course you can read all their manga while you're there, or pay an extra fee to use a computer. Most have a very different vibe though, with an overtly less "social" atmosphere (more like a library); a similar model in a more traditional cafe setting sounds very appealing.
I hack at a local coffeeshop about once a week. My favorite place has an in-house special that's a cup and refill for $2. Since I drink too much coffee I take them up on that about every couple of hours. 4 hours = 8 12oz cups for $8. But I always buy a pastry or bagel when I start which is another $3.50. Also...I tip them. I make sure they know that I'm tipping as to not get "the glare" and so for my 4 hours and $11.50 I'll tip about $5. It's also because I know it's a business and I'm taking up space. $16.50 gets me a great spot to code and wifi that isn't my house with the kids running around
I think that the tipping is what's overlooked. Unless your barista owns the place, they just want tables available for other people and to make some money...that's the point of a job right? So tip them, let them know you're tipping because you appreciate the use of the their space and that's that.
One strong drink is enough for me, so I just tip 100% at the local place where I regularly camp -- whether I'm camping or picking up a drink. If your coffee shop is near a university, bring your regular barista something nice, some food, etc. during finals. He or she is probably pulling doubles. This is coming up soon...
I see a lot of suggestions to tip heavily to counter the cost of sitting down for a while to work at a local coffee shop. I don't think this solves the problem at hand.
I run a food business as a side job. Don't get me wrong, I love my employees. They deserve getting handsome tips. I tip well whenever I go out. I don't have a problem with the idea of tipping.
However, as the owner, I don't get to touch those tips my employees receive (and rightfully so). I'm also the one that has to pay the rent, the internet bill, and the power bill...not my employees. Nor does tipping absolve me of the need to pay my employees their wages.
When you are using power, wifi, and/or a seat at a business, you're using something that the owner is offering in exchange for you ordering something to consume. It's not something that your barista or cook or waitstaff is offering to you, like your drink or food you ordered. It's not something that the tip will pay for in any way. The only way to offset that cost is to keep buying something periodically, even if it's a small drink off the menu. Really, even the longest camper isn't using up much of anything, but it's numbers that make a problem and really add up over the course of, say, a month.
tl;dr Buy something to eat or drink periodically on top of tipping generously. They are two separate issues.
reply