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Comment by closeparen | Hacker News Reader

This is baffling to me: there are actually people in the world who would happily go to a coffee shop, buy some coffee, and leave?

That's an extremely poor value proposition and I've been working to eliminate this particularly egregious form of waste from my budget. If all I want is coffee, I can make it myself.

The whole point is getting to spend some time in a pleasant place other than your home. Certainly some people can take "some time" too far, but I have no reason to be a customer at all if I'm expected to leave immediately.

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The point is if you buy a coffee and drink it at a little table in the coffee shop, and then leave, you may have spent 5 to 10 minutes there. But if you're going to set up your laptop and work 2 hours before purchasing another coffee, then you're taking over a space which could have served about 10 more customers in the same time span.

In addition to that, if you're there to work, chances are you're there by yourself. However other customers may come in groups, and that table can be used by the group. By taking over the table and having that group pass the shop for another place where they can drink/eat+talk, you're costing the shop a lot of customers.

It's an extremely poor value proposition for the coffeshop owner to have you spend 3 bucks and take up his table for hours. You're treating it like a co-working space and those spaces charge way more than a buck an hour.

You pay for time saving. You don't have to shop for coffee/milk, deal with logistics of storage of ingredients and making sure you have supply continuously, no need to make the coffee, wash cups afterwards.

Also you get a standard quality of coffee which you can rely on. If you do it yourself, quality can vary and you might make good coffee some times but other times you will make terrible coffee.

It depends but for some people it might be a good value proposition. The time savings and consistent quality could be more valuable then couple of bucks for coffee twice a day.

My quality control is worse than Starbucks? Not in my experience, no. Yes, there is a minor time savings--though when there are ten persons in line ahead of me, most buying complicated drinks, that savings decreases.

It depends on person. Personally I can't make a good coffee on consistent basis so I'd rather buy it from coffee shop so I know I will get the same standard of quality I am used to.

Your comment is baffling to me! The vast majority of people get their coffee and leave - at most they stay for a few minutes. They're paying to not make coffee themselves. A lot of people get drinks they can't easily make at home either.

And honestly at least in NYC none of the coffee shops near work are pleasant. They either have people that hog the tables or are just super loud because they're having meetings or blowing off steam. The ones near my home are nice though, I go read there.

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