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Show HN: I built a website to find nearby cafes to work remotely from

workmode.co

248 pointsfrizkyK225 comments

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 influence behaviour away from this norm. E.g. limited internet consumption, no wall sockets, pay-per-minute, etc. Thoughts?

Just don't have wifi.

Tether off your phone. I rarely use public wifi, too much hassle.

Don't have power though and I won't be around for long.

Seems like less of a problem these days. Most laptops will give you hours of use without charging. M1s and Chromebooks basically give you an entire day.

And a fair number of people just work on their phones for a lot of purposes.

Yeah, have enough traffic on my phone that connecting to wifi that has hundreds of other people connected to it is generally a bad idea.

If my network slows to a crawl, it’s always because I’ve accidentally connected to some public wifi network.

I suspect that would decrease your potential market significantly.

If people only come to your place for wifi then they're not the customers you want imo.

Charge enough for wifi or a seat that it's not a problem for you.

There used to be a cafe like this near me in SF. Unfortunately the zoning board ruled that it was more like an office than a cafe, meaning not permitted in a retail space.

Don’t do this unless you want to get shut down.

This isn’t just “the fun police” either. Pre pandemic SF was very sensitive about tech workers/offices crowding out other elements of the city. Work-friendly cafes would be immensely popular, meaning they would take up a lot of retail that could otherwise have more “character.” Now with so much commercial and retail vacancy it’s less of a zero sum game.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972491

That's crazy. I sat in a mostly empty cafe for about 45 minutes last week waiting for a train, had a coffee and croissant and had I been there much longer I'd be orderign something else

On the other hand in the old days you used to pay $x for 30 minutes of time on a computer. I don't see a problem with 30 minutes free with a coffee, then charging extra for time.

We have a shop near us with a "no laptops" policy, and another with laptop hours. This works pretty well from what I've seen.

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 worked at a cafe, it worked more like a family than a business, we all got food in the evening and had fun together, the restaurant was the main life, but one shouldnt underestimate the café when it was in a good day, alot of people enjoy just coming in and grabbing togo if its good, more than enough to make up for the hangarounds/workers.

Also it seemed the more people who where actually there the more business it received.

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.

[1] https://www.ziferblat.co.uk/Coventry/discover [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-caf%C3%A9

It's more likely the bookstore would be the loss-leader for the cafe.

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.

“Historically” is relevant how? The world moves on, cafes are no exception lmao.

You’re right, they’ve moved on from periodicals and discussion groups to laptop usage for hours at a time :)

> Maximizing absolute profit by optimizing customer throughput is the modern take.

Because real estate prices and thus rent have gone through the roof compared to the historic average.

Coffee used to be expensive relative to wages and rent ultra-cheap. Now that's flipped.

There is a cafe chain in Russia that charges by the minute but most drinks are free. They tried to expand to the U.K. in the mid-2010s, but their test cafes failed, and they pulled out after a few years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziferblat

The one in Manchester is still here, just under a different name: https://oppidan-social.com/

It's quite reasonably priced actually, and a bit more co-working focused than your average coffee shop.

4? Where! I’m fine that independent cafes charge like $12-$14 for anything now in places I go

Price out other people doing less lucrative things that would be in the way. Bloggers, starry eyed dropshippers, enlightened failed dropshippers Writing books on dropshipping, people trying to start an online jewelry store. Its too bad this can include coffee drinkers as well.

My M1 seems like it has infinite battery, I’ll tether if I have to

This [0] cafe in Berlin charges you by the hour. And the first drink is included. Worked really well for me when I was in Berlin. No subscription needed.

[0] https://kleinmein.gr/en/coworking-space/

This looks fantastic. Working remotely since the start of the pandemic, these days I'd love a sustainable option like that for 3 hours at a time once or twice per week.

This is brilliant! I wonder how they police it? Is it simply a limited time access to the internet?

Important to note that the second feature they list is: "comfy seats." It seems that many coffee shops try to fight the over use problem with uncomfortable seating.

In one I've been you can pick a totem (they're all in form of old pocket watches), and they note what time this totem got "checked out" of the reception, and what time it returns, and charge you for the minutes.

Oh that’s lovely.

They don't police it. It is an honesty system. I think limiting internet access is a pointless method because it is so easy to tether to your phone. And you don't have to work online to work there, you can also draw or read.

charge for the wifi after 1h?

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 get annoyed enough having to find the wifi password, having to do a monkey dance every hour would be more annoying still.

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.

Haha, I thought maybe turn the whole cafe into a faraday cage (don't know if that is possible) so that no phones or internet work.

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

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?

I suspect so, but I wouldn't put it past Costco to intentionally block most of price checking say ...

(Costco being the only one I've been in that didn't provide store-wide free wifi.)

What kind of law would prohibit you to block out cell signal in your own building?

An entirely sensible one which prohibits you from preventing an emergency call being made in case of fire, injury, crime etc.

> which prohibits you from preventing an emergency call being made

The solution to this is simple: A land line behind the counter.

Active signal blocking / jamming with electrical devices are illegal in the US, but passive devices like signal-blocking wallpaper and windows are entirely legal.

The few times I've had my home internet drop out and I needed a few hours of wi-fi to get work done I realized the local cafes were the same people there sometimes taking all the spaces. I usually got lunch and etc too considering I was taking up the shop's space for a few hours... but I was one of the few who did that.

Maybe there needs to be an office space + cubicle + coffee shop rental thing ... but I'm not sure you could charge enough to justify it / folks would probably save money and just go camp at a coffee shop.

It's an interesting dynamic.

> Maybe there needs to be an office space + cubicle + coffee shop rental thing

This is essentially what co-working spaces like WeWork are. But they are quite expensive which is probably why a lot of people continue to use coffee shops (environment and location of coffee shop may also be preferable)

Yeah I work form home and I looked into those spaces at one time and OMG ... yeah that's not something I'm going to do.

I already pay rent on a whole home. Not going to pay the same amount for 6 square meter.

I'm thinking instead of cafe maybe a place that one can rent a small, dark and quiet room at relatively flat price. Say any coffee for the first hour and then $2 per hour. Additional basic Coffee is free but food needs $$$. Does it make any financial sense? I guess no? Is there a way for the customer to claim the expense as sort of WFH expense?

It's not exactly the same, but in Japan a few capsule net cafes opened up that sound similar to what you're talking about:

https://youtu.be/HkNzjvueJm8

Thanks that's almost what exactly I want. I don't need the computer though so that's a difference. I also want chairs. But that's what I have in mind.

A space where you can work? Potentially with spaces with others. With break out spaces for working with others, with a few perks thrown in? Call it WeWork?

Isn't it fair for restaurants to ask you to clear the table if you haven't ordered anything for a while and they need the space for new customers? Why shouldn't cafés do they same?

> they need the space for new customers?

I think this is an important point. I occasionally work in a Panera near me during the weekday (I usually order a soup or sandwich) and I don't feel bad about taking up a seat for an hour or two since the place is practically empty, and would be a little irked if someone asked me to order something at that point.

I would feel bad and wouldn't mind at all with leaving or ordering something more frequently if I wanted to do the same thing on a Sunday afternoon since the place is often very busy.

Some signage similar in tone to what I see with metro buses and wheelchair seats seem appropriate (roughly worded as "it's perfectly fine to sit here, but if you see someone who needs this spot, you should give it up").

One approach is to incentivize customers toward doing what you want

We need more coworking spaces with cafes. Cafés weren't designed to be coworking spaces.

Recent ones are.

It's a definitional thing. If you build a cafe for the primary purpose of encouraging coworking, you've built a coworking space with coffee, not a cafe.

I would love the idea of buying something every hour or so. In return get a code that you can use to extend the WiFi availability. Or just straight-up pay via your laptop for X amount of WiFi hours which allows you to sit in the coffee shop.

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 even further with the tactics a lot of cafes already to nudge behavior at the margin, some of which you've already noticed (e.g., less-than-stellar wifi, thermostat at slightly cold temperature, limited actual seating space, only 1-2 customer-accessible wall sockets, etc.).

On the question of charging-by-the-minute: the marginal profit you can earn on coffee is higher than marginal profit you can earn on real estate. That's why Starbucks (which sells coffee and gives away real estate) is a better business than WeWork (which sells real estate and gives away coffee). Therefore instead of charging by the minute, you might consider raising your coffee prices and/or controlling the average amount of real estate you're giving away per unit of coffee sold.

Buy more coffee - get more minutes?

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 provide value beyond your costs. one pro-customer option is providing food (beyond pastries) for the lingerers, which adds some marginal cost but adds significant marginal revenue.

I think you're armchairing the problem by stating coffee shops exist therefore there is no problem. Many coffee shops do impose user hostile actions like loud music, small uncomfortable seating, etc. The others are big chains that have efficiencies (e.g. lower prices, more efficient workforce, better analytics) that are not available to smaller shops.

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

as an avid cafe-goer, i've looked into the economics of cafes and talk regularly with the coffee shop owners around me. competition is almost never a concern for most small/independent cafes. starbucks doesn't matter competitively because their prices aren't appreciably lower and they cater to a different segment than independent cafe owners.

the biggest problem is almost always reaching their target segment--like the people already sitting there with laptops--to drive enough transaction volume to be sustainable, which is squarely a marketing problem. rent and labor costs (operations) are usually the next biggest problems. competition ain't the issue.

"Marketing" usually means getting people to know about your product or service and getting them through the door.

If the owner has people sitting there and wants them to purchase more, that's more increasing average revenue per user which is limited. How much coffee can someone drink? If someone drinks a plain coffee, getting them to upgrade to a higher margin sugary drink is hard. You can push food and snacks, but that's also limited since you're not a restaurant and the person can only eat so many pastries or dry goods. For every one customer sitting down there are likely 10 customers that come in during that time. Why focus on the person sitting down?

Getting more people in the door is probably an easier way to get more revenue. Especially considering the amount of people that can sit around all day versus the amount of people that can walk by and pick up a cup of coffee to go. In that regard, competition is definitely a huge factor. If a coffee shop has a 15 minute wait while another one is 5 minutes, I would likely pick the faster one. You can prefer one brand to another, but service is a huge factor.

yes, getting more people in the door was the point--a marketing problem, not a competitive one. what you don't want to do is give people a reason to eschew your shop with customer-hostility, which compounds rather than alleviates the marketing problem.

If it turns into a cold and customer-hostile transaction, I'll just brew my own cup of coffee at home for 80 cents

Yeah sounds like a MBA coming in and ruining a business by targeting the wrong metrics. Success comes by providing a lot of value, not by pushing as many people through the door as possible through creating an uncomfortable situation so the customer leave quickly.

You’re assuming that loitering people are a negative on the business — which is a mistake that Starbucks made as well, to their detriment.

Starbucks did what you’re suggesting to increase turnover and profit at stores — but the opposite happened: sales dramatically dropped, even though the time to serve a single customer and the average customer stay both dropped.

The issue is that Starbucks doesn’t just sell coffee — they’re a cafe. And cafes are in the business of selling thirdspace, where you create fun memories with friends and family. So when they provided a substantially worse version of that product, it sullied their brand and lowered their overall profit, because people no longer associated coffee at their chain with good times.

Similarly, the owner of a small cafe I used to work from loved the three or four regulars who would come near open and stay all morning — us being visibly chatty in the large storefront windows would draw in more of the nearby joggers than if the store was empty. We were a free living ad that getting coffee there was a fun time and popular with locals.

I think you’re ignoring a lot of ecosystem complexity with your “optimization”.

I completely agree. Just think about your own behavior: do you choose the empty cafe or the one with many people inside?

Unless the all-dayers are actually blocking space that other customers could use, they are likelier to profit the business than harm it.

So small cafe owners won't mind, provided they are smarter than Starbucks was.

> Starbucks did what you’re suggesting to increase turnover and profit at stores — but the opposite happened: sales dramatically dropped, even though the time to serve a single customer and the average customer stay both dropped.

Can you show me where starbucks revenue dropped (besides 2020 pandemic dip)?

2021 $29,061

2020 $23,518

2019 $26,509

2018 $24,720

2017 $22,387

2016 $21,316

2015 $19,163

2014 $16,448

2013 $14,867

2012 $13,277

2011 $11,700

2010 $10,707

Or maybe you mean same store sales! Oh wait, those have been up every quarter except one since Q4 2009.

I never understood why people online make shit up. People spout very easily googleable statements like "their revenue went down" so confidently, without bothering to check. They live in fantasy land where they pretend like the goal of a coffee shop is something akin to "serving the community" or "being a third place" when in actuality the point is to sell something for more than it costs to produce. You may want your coffee shop to be a third place. But it doesn't make it a viable business model.

MBA types get a lot of shit on this forum, but MBA types are good at some things. And those things include running a pretty simple business like a coffee shop. It's pretty simple math, you can set clear targets, estimate demand and balance trade offs like what to have on the menu and how much to charge. Sure there's things like investments and long term planning, but they do that as well, just without the romanitization.

https://twitter.com/jonathanmaze/status/1255246119128444930

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SBUX/starbucks/rev...

Just an unaffiliated 3rd party observer here, but is it possible they meant revenue went down relative to corporate projections or didn't increase in line with other factors like inflation?

Just a thought.

Or in selected stores that were piloting changes in a discussion about customer sentiment with Starbucks finance staff I was advising.

I never said they did it everywhere and crashed the company — which is what would be required for top level numbers like those to change.

Yawn — aggregate global numbers don’t represent every trial Starbucks has done at their stores, and this is based on my discussions with Starbucks finance staff about this phenomena.

But sure, I just made it up because my story (in simplified form) didn’t match the numbers you quickly found about global aggregates.

> They live in fantasy land where they pretend like the goal of a coffee shop is something akin to "serving the community" or "being a third place" when in actuality the point is to sell something for more than it costs to produce.

I think it’s interesting that because you couldn’t verify my personal anecdote on public data, you made extremely negative assumptions about me:

- I’m a liar.

- I don’t know about business from spending a decade in marketing, econ, and finance.

You also seem to not even understand the term “thirdspace” or realize that’s a product cafes, bars, and restaurants sell and from where they gain part of their value by being fun and social. Whoa!

> MBA types get a lot of shit on this forum, but MBA types are good at some things. And those things include running a pretty simple business like a coffee shop. It's pretty simple math, you can set clear targets, estimate demand and balance trade offs like what to have on the menu and how much to charge.

Except that this is untrue and a reflection of your own lack of information — though I agree MBAs get an unfair treatment around here.

However, you’re dead wrong about running a coffee shop being simple maximization or “simple math” — but I hope you keep it up. Small minds like yours causing problems keeps me employed to fix them.

> only 1-2 customer-accessible wall sockets,

Before I got an M1 laptop, this was a real issue for me. Now, it really doesn't matter. My battery will easily last the entire time I am in the cafe without really thinking about it.

M1: it's not just WWII tank, but an invasion machine against the cafe and its hapless operators and patrons.

Mouhaha!

A busy cafe with seated people also psychologically has an impact on people just stopping in for takeout.

Precisely this. Empty shops have an unconscious (sometimes conscious) effect on people making them less likely to drop in themselves. 1-3 people taking up wifi and electricity could easily attract enough customers to pay for their visit with each stay.

This does only really apply in shops in areas with decent foot traffic though.

Uncomfortable chairs is how fast food restaurants handle this. If you make the seating comfortable, people will stay longer. Make it less comfortable (or uncomfortable) and people will move on after a shorter period of time.

peeps sitting for hours taking up a plug + wifi in exchange for ~£$4. Hugely uneconomical for independents.

It's only uneconomical if enough potential customers leave because they can't sit down or I guess if they use a ton of power. Business Internet is not usage based, right? and you're buying that anyway...

One place near me instituted a "co working packages" which you were expected to pay a certain fee and that got you drinks, maybe a pastry and let you sit down for some amount of time.

I would go in there for a pastry from time to time and the place sometimes had one or two people on laptops in there, and had plenty of seats both before and after having this co-working policy. It's not a surprise, there are tons of cafes in walking distance and this was the only one that cared about charging people to sit there. They were all pretty similarly not at capacity regardless of "scarcities".

Then there's the cost of enforcement - what happens if someone causes a scene and doesn't want to leave? You have to pay staff for that that you might not have to otherwise. Same with software tracking minutes of wifi used.

> Business Internet is not usage based

You'd think that's the case but really, it depends.

It depends on what connection type you have, what country you're in, and how remote you are or aren't. Business grade fibre in a big city? Probably not going to be metered and you'll have bandwidth to spare. ADSL in the middle of nowhere? Almost certainly going to be metered and you'll have very little bandwidth.

SF Used to (still does?) have the Workshop Cafe that charged by the hour. It was usually packed! I think they shutdown during COVID and have not re-opened (yet?)

https://www.workshopcafe.com/

Have a system by which each coffee comes with a unique code on the receipt. This code grants you 1hr on the WiFi before terminating your session.

Present a screen which provides a payment gateway to buy more time - or for less money - buy another drink.

I've been to cafes before which let you "rent" a security lock for laptops and all the tables had a loop which they could be attached too.

In many cafes I've seen signs saying "no tablets/laptops at the weekend" to make space for customers who want to socialise.

> Have a system by which each coffee comes with a unique code on the receipt. This code grants you 1hr on the WiFi before terminating your session.

I went to a place like that a few years ago. I could never comfortably finish my drink within the time limit, so I'd get cut off wifi while still drinking, even if I was just browsing to relax, not spending hours.

Perhaps it worked for them: I stopped going there and taking up seating. Then again I stopped going there to buy anything as well.

The internet time limit was an improvement over their previous policy, of playing music way too loud, which staff told me was deliberate. That didn't actually push people away who had laptops - people like me wore earplugs with noise cancelling headphones over the top, to bring the awful sound down to bearable levels. But it stopped people who came in for a chat with friends from chatting.

I've asked some cafe owners this question, and they just answered, nah, stay as long as you want; most customers never sit down anyway.

Dont forget, nobody enters an empty cafe, so a few ppl. with laptops signaling the place is ok and open during opening hours might even be beneficial.

I used to think the same thing until I realized that I can't remember the last time I actually sat down in a coffee shop to drink coffee. I always buy it to go, and I imagine the vast majority of people do that too.

Not sure this is a problem.

I work a lot from cafes and being the lazy guy I am, I've a selection of 3 places that I go to regularly. The times I work are not their peak hours, so I'm not taking a seat from anybody, but I'm there a lot. Like, 3-4 days a week. I drink coffee, buy some cake, occasionally some wrap for lunch .. by now I've dumped 4-figures on each of my regular places. If I walk by places that I don't frequent regularly -- they also have empty seats, but they don't have those dollars in their pockets that I left at their competition. Why do I not go there? They are not as comfy/cozy. Less comfy chairs, unpleasant lighting, no good coffee, no good cake. Some of those certainly on purpose to repel customers like me. They certainly succeeded at that, but obviously didn't get my money in return either. Winning me as a regular customer is a big win (that's what I tell myself, at least).

The vast majority of a coffee shop's business happens during the morning rush. If you can't be profitable just from that, the small trickle of customers for the rest of the day isn't going to make a difference to your overall finances, whether they are staying at the table for 1 hour or 4. This is why most coffee shops don't really care about this problem.

There's a coffee chain here in Brooklyn [1] that has been spreading very quickly who has targeted opening in small spaces, or as short term pop-ups inside other spaces, without much (or any) seating. This probably limits those behaviors you're talking about. They've raised close to $70 million for some reason [2][3].

There's a couple a few blocks from me but I've never tried them, as I just make coffee with an aeropress at home. When I was younger I'd hang out at coffee shops and pretend to be getting work done, but not so much as an adult.

[1] https://www.blankstreet.com/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/douglasyu/2021/10/13/blank-stre...

[3] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/blank-street

I have been thinking of subscription only coffee shop.

Members bring some kind of card to scan and enter.

This way, members have a safe place to come in, work, and read whatever they want to read.

I’ve always liked the idea of opening a café too. My thoughts on the matter are related to this; I think the biggest stressor for me would be paying rent so if I ever do I’d like to own the location.

I guess that’s hard in the USA where commercial and residential spaces are so strictly kept separate and far away from each other. Where I’m from it’s not rare for a business to be in a place that used to be (or still is) someone’s home. This includes one of my favorite cafes (they make fantastic food) which seems to be the owner’s home lawn and first floor.

I don’t know the exact economics of this, but I can imagine not paying rent means this sort of customer stops being an existential threat and just becomes a nuisance if you want to maximize profits.

EDIT: do note I'm sharing this from the perspective of someone who would set up a café "for fun" and to "keep busy" when retired or something, not as someone who would want to necessarily set up a while operation with employees or live off of this café.

I can't find the one research study I wanted to link to now, but with a search on Google Scholar you'll find papers on this topic.

The one I wanted to link to raised up the same concerns from coffee shop owners, and those that embraced a coffee shop/coworking space model, had their plugs + comfy chairs in the back where they could also offer a less noisy environment (without an actual separating wall or anything like that). If I recall correctly they also had one-day type of passes that included a couple of drinks/snacks.

That specific paper was about this model during the pandemic period, a followup study would be interesting now once everything is opened/opening up.

The inverse of this is that you want to have "stiff" chairs if you don't want people to linger for too long when they get a coffee.

If there are empty seats, I don't feel guilty at all.

I'll usually get up multiple times to order something. And the atmosphere of feeling welcomed makes me come back every week.

Some cafes near me will nudge people to buy something if they have been there for hours. While some like that people working there makes them look busy so they are okay with it.

So, I guess this might or might be a burden. It depends completely on the cafe.

The more that a coffee shop is customer-hostile, the less I'll visit it, even if I were to get something to go. I don't want to support businesses who don't want to support me.

Maybe going for a co-working space is better on your case.

> 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

You'd have done well in Budapest at one time [0].

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_235-hSeKFI

A few things that come to mind from having worked in many coffees in a few countries where those were implemented would be to institute an off-peak/peak time policy where people are asked not to work during peak time (e.g. lunch), have some sort of subscription model which comes with a faster wifi and X drinks a month.

I discovered a pretty neat alternative to cafes a few years back.

I like to go to the food court at my local shopping mall. It's pretty much empty during the day, has plenty of seating, different table heights, outlets, wi-fi, etc. Nobody will kick you out if you're not constantly sipping coffee, and you won't feel the pressure to keep buying stuff. As a bonus, there is a McDonalds often selling coffee for just $1. And when it's lunch time, well, there's a dozen restaurants to chose from!

Bonus if you have decals on your laptop that promote your brand(s) - free exposure or potential conversation starter, especially during any rush times!

This is quite brilliant. Also I suppose the space is wide and with high ceilings which should help with abstract thinking

…is that a thing?

Absolutely, why do you think churches have such high ceilings? Or just sheer volume of air means you're getting more oxygen to your brain vs. working in a 10x10x10 cube.

Maybe VR can help with this? Simulate nature without the drawbacks of working outside where there is a lack of internet and the sun glare on your screen.

Like 5 citations needed

Idk about 5, but here is one:

http://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71190.pdf

Also anecdotally (or, rather, I just can’t provide a source), I heard from a philosophy professor that the low ceilings in cells of scholastic monks affected their thinking process, driving their hyper-focus on detailed arguments. I don’t quite remember which school he was comparing with though.

An alternative take - since the “abstract-detail-oriented” thinking may be susceptible to feedback-loops, one may consider that they are more detail-oriented in rooms with low ceilings and abstract-minded in rooms with high ceilings, and his brain will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy :)

Study on the economic benefits of working in nature: https://www.terrapinbrightgreen.com/reports/the-economics-of...

I haven't tried any of the VR offices spaces, but from what I've seen, it looks like a SV office. What if one could VR conference/work in Muir Woods instead?

https://xkcd.com/285/

Plus ample walking space in the winter months, relatively safe even during peak covid, 80s and 90s design, often have a movie theater nearby. Not sure what else one would want in a work environment.

I've been doing the same when I was traveling in Asia :)

Btw, you can also submit and check into food courts on Workmode! I've added a couple myself haha

I like to hang out at IKEA. Coffee is free at the one here if you have their loyalty card and the staff enjoy seeing regular customers. There are a few couches and some comfortable seating areas in addition to nearly infinite supply of tables.

Outside of the predictable busy days, it’s a comfortable space to hang out in the evening.

I also figured out the fire stairs in the cafe don’t have alarms on the interior doors, so you can go directly to the ground floor lobby instead of walking through the warehouse to get to the exit. The staff encouraged me to use it as long as I exit the stairs inside the building. :)

IKEA and food court is where I cycled between when I was unemployed and just needed to get out of the house. Both excellent options. Breakfast is very cheap at IKEA too, and can be high protein.

Also when you have kids, taking them to Smaland at IKEA nets you 1-2 hours of free childcare while you work... or just relax.

I've found libraries to be superior to cafes for working -- dead quiet. Funded by the taxpayer, so zero financial worries, just a public space. Free WiFi, Printer, etc. Nice chairs too

Yes, I agree! You can also submit and check into libraries on Workmode.co!

Yes, libraries have been one of my best choices for a year, instead of an hour driving to the office, I changed my routine to 10 min, grab a coffee, and head to the library. The only downside is you can't make a phone call in a library, sometimes I had to run to the parking lot (which also has wifi covered) to take Zoom calls :D

Many libraries have conference rooms and small rooms you can book for silent work or meetings. Many have separated silent and social areas in which you can get away with a call if you're on headphones and not being a loud douche. Just ask at the desk.

My library has fiber internet...but it only allows browsing. No ssh, no git, no vpn...

I use a VPN service which has endpoints that accept connections on TCP 80/443, and UDP 53, one of these usually works to bypass these limitations.

which one is that?

AirVPN, https://airvpn.org/

Just use a tunnel through one of the open ports. If you don't have a server handy, the cheapest VM on any hosting company would cost practically nothing.

Sorry guys I'm so stupid.

If there are no results, the backend fetches the results from Google and injects them into the database. Got tons of traffic posting it here, which messed up the backend. Just turned it off :'(

Better solution to create a queue, cron, and occasionally fetch new cities...

Love the simplistic design - "500 Internal Server Error"

Probably server went down due to too much traffic

Bro.

Hug of death

Sorry for that.. Should be better now The backend fetched places from Google whenever there were none available :( Turned it off for now

A better solution would be to queue and cron it.

Slashdotted.

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 approaches.

Coffee shop I used to work at made the conscious choice not to have any customer-accessible power outlets, so people were limited by their laptop batteries. I was told when they built the place, they debated between offering free wifi, or having plugs in the cafe. They ended up offering wifi, but no plugs. Seemed to work pretty well, I don't remember there being a huge crowd of people staying long. Although it was also a small shop with fairly limited seating.

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.

It may depend on the coffee shop. There is a local cafe near me that gets customers, but I've never really seen it full. I'm sure they would love to have a crowd of people hanging out buying drinks, but also making it appear more popular and a nice place to hang out. I've been to cafes before that were silent and just awkward to be in because it was just me, my friend, and the barista.

> 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.

Heh, I was going to say, the other day I was able to use my M1 Pro laptop for nearly 8 hours and it still had around 30% battery remaining.

The people who try to order a single black coffee and plop down for 8 hours (the aforementioned "laptop hobos") are almost assuredly going to be using an older laptop with a beat up battery.

People who can afford a latest gen MacBook with great battery life are also the people who can afford fancier drinks every couple hours.

My local caffee that I often visit with a laptop usually just plainly asks to leave if you are at the table for more than 1 hour without ordering anything :-D I have no problem with that and it doesn't seem like there is a lack of laptop-users and study-groups in the caffee, I guess other people are understanding too :-D

Just tried the site, works fast and nicely but...

I searched for 'Birmingham' in the search box. The suggested list included Birmingham UK as well as Birmingham Al and all. Clicked to accept Birmingham UK and got a list of places in Birmingham AL USA.

I understand that the system is based on user reports. But perhaps a way of saying 'nothing for Birmingham UK, did you mean...' might help.

PS: a few below for Birmingham UK

https://www.waylandsyard.com/birmingham

Off peak afternoons good...window benches are nice. Batteries needed. Just up the road from a huge but largely empty co-working space in an old department store that charges huge fees. Wifi OKish

https://javaroastery.co.uk/

Java Roastery: again best at off-peak times, i.e. mid morning or mid-afternoon. Quite a few one / two people tables. Batteries needed.

https://www.karibucoffeehouse.co.uk/

Tanzania theme, used to have a lovely long bench against a wall with power sockets and fast wifi. The bench was a COVID victim but power might still be OK. I'm hoping the drop-donuts with cardamom and spices are still on.

https://www.oldprintworks.org/transfer

Actual co-working space at £75 month or taster £5 for first week if you are passing through... not been there at all as I have an actual house not far away.

I've used a similar product at https://workfrom.co . Albeit, it appears they partially pivoted during the pandemic towards virtual co-working.

They have an app that has wifi speed reports which was my primary reason to install it (it also lists a qualitative score for accessing a power socket). There's around 20,000 locations in their database IIRC. The old web interface still exists eg: https://workfrom.co/search?g=seattle

When I click Near Me it shows Amsterdam but I'm in California. It also doesn't ask to geolocate me. Is it not working for me? It seems that you're using Cloudflare. I wrote a blogpost [1] about GeoIP lookup using free Cloudflare workers you might find useful.

[1] https://tedpiotrowski.svbtle.com/free-geoip-api-with-cloudfl...

A good database of municipalities for the drop-down selector for location. But when I select my town, the site gets my location wrong.

The Town of Harvard is not very near the university named Harvard, nor the Cambridge neighborhood of Harvard Square. So either the location of the town is incorrect, or the application is in some other way misinterpreting the selected location.

It also finds no cafes near Harvard Square.

Nice, but I specifically don't want this tool. I work from cafes a few days a week. I'm aware that this is not what cafes are for, so I generally try to consume as much as I can (multiple espressos and water bottles that I'd honestly normally get) to offset that, and also tip generously. I also try to get the most undesirable and/or smaller table, and so far the people appreciated and understood what I'm doing. But then again, I know people are different. So I'm not looking forward for a lot of people to fill cafes and sit there for 4 hours on a 2$ bill, it's just going to hurt me as someone that tries to be mindful of someone's business, and the business owner as someone who'll have to kick out a hobo with a Macbook for sipping an espresso for 5 hours while working for more than the coffee shop makes in a day/week.

I live in NYC and I probably would've enjoyed this site a lot more before I ended up just shelling for a WeWork membership. But coffee shops, libraries just aren't conducive to getting real work done. I'm more invested in co-working spaces again now that I have a fully remote job.

This is pretty cool. Unfortunately it's not valuable yet without other people populating it with data. Is there any way you can automatically get a first batch of data into it? Maybe scrape coffee shops from Google Maps and add them as not verified or something like that.

Yes, the backend fetched places from Google whenever there are none listed on Workmode. Had to turn it off because Hackernews slowed down the system OOPS

Makes sense. You should backfill even when there are results. It would be a shame for the first review coming in to become the only listing.

This, like most apps of its kind, struggles from a bootstrap problem. I live in a fairly non-tech-centric area, one where finding a good remote-work spot would be very useful, but because there's limited population of people who frequent both that kind of spot and this kind of site in the area, a site like this is unlikely to have results. It's a reverse network effect of sorts.

Not your fault, frizkyK, but perhaps it's something to chew on. Maybe crawl some maps data to locate "potential" candidates and offer value to a user for evaluating them?

Edit: I see that it's actually already a feature that you've disabled for stability reasons. Interested to see how it behaves once that's resolved.

Oh man. I love how clean this UI is. I'm stealing some ideas for sure.

Can you point me toward any inspiration you had in designing? Other sites, approaches, etc.? I know nothing about UI design and it always stops me from getting my ideas created.

Thanks :) I got a lot of inspiration from the Twitter UI/UX actually haha

Hey frizkyK - if you'd like improve the site for SEO I'd be happy to jump on a call and give you some pointers. There's a lot of good stuff here already.

(Free, of course, I just think this is a cool idea!)

Nice idea! https://laptopfriendly.co/ does a similar thing.

Back in the the dotcom days, "Internet Cafes" were special places in SF, where people would hack, surf, eat not-so-great pastries and equally dodgy coffee.

Today, as far as I can tell, there is only one cafe left in SF that calls itself an "Internet Cafe": http://orderquetzalinternetcafe.com

I'm not sure if it's a vestige of the past or some kind of retro themed branding, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Perhaps these are still more common in other countries where home and mobile internet isn't as widespread or reliable?

Cool idea but it shows me Amsterdam cafes but I am located in Tallinn.

I think it defaults to Amsterdam for anyone it cannot locate (because "A" maybe...?).

Because no-one has added a closer cafe yet.

Not sure how much use it would be for Tallinn anyway, you have Wifi in your pocket anyway so that really isn't a deciding factor usually (unless you are traveling through and don't want to get a temp SIM for mobile internet).

If I'd have to guess, people pick cafes to work from here based on the location, atmosphere and food.

Could literally work under a tree in a forest here if you have enough battery.

Quick bug report: I changed my username, and while it's updated the routing, it hasn't updated the UI. The form keeps trying to use the old username, and the profile menu item keeps linking to the old username.

Also, "Near me" doesn't seem to work. It finds nothing, even though when I manually search my city there are plenty of options. Might be useful to explain how it determines what's "Near you" and attempt to expand the radius or suggest a search if it finds nothing.

Cool website, but a couple of UX issues. The location search was failing on my first fetch of the site so I was typing my city and wondering why nothing was showing up. Perhaps some kind of error or feedback would make that experience better. The bottom-right location icon also doesn't seem to like me rejecting location permission and spins indefinitely.

Keen to give it a go with some cafes in my area though as currently there are none for my location.

Bug report: I can find cafés in my city when I search, but "Places near you" still give me places that are are 800km away. Even when I sort by distance.

Wow, I didn't know that we can work from Whole Foods https://workmode.co/san-jose/whole-foods-market

jk. This is great! I've been WFH for quite a long time, and sometimes wish to have exactly the same app here where I can go find somewhere near my house to work. Thank you so much for building this!

Fun to play around with, nice job. Looking at all the cafes and coffeeshops from the before times when going out was safe and working from home wasn't the norm.

Random: a 'workplace' near me is listed on the map but it's a medical supplies store? Not sure why it's listed as an option, pretty sure there's nothing in there but retail. What's the criteria for your listings?

The "near you" list sent me to amsterdam, I'm in bogota, like a continent away, Maybe you should check your geo-ip api/db

Thumbs up from me, nice work.

My wants:

* Support for e-mail signins, instead of only via SSO

* The "Near me" function appears to only use IP as a source for location awareness(?). This is going to be wildly inaccurate in many countries

* The UI is ... off. I can't put my finger on it, so this isn't helpful, I guess, but if feels like something's missing, which makes me feel lost

HN hug of death, website keeps loading. What's the tech stack? Shouldn't the basic static files still load properly?

I love the idea - One issue I'm seeing however is that places with duplicate names (Try "Santiago" or "San Jose" for examples of city names that are shared by many large places) aren't returning their distinct results when clicked on, immediately making it impossible for me to use.

I like the idea, but I threw in a bunch of test queries and it only seems to find cafes in places where it's easy to find cafes to work from (and thus the site is not really needed). In all the cities where I remember struggling to find a place to sit with my laptop, it returned zero results.

I don’t think there is a way to replace local knowledge. I’ve been changing cities and countries many times in the past decade and every time I tried to find local gems using Google, maps, reviews and so on.

Nothing comes close to substituting connection with locals and good old word of mouth.

I agree, but the results on Workmode are submitted and reviewed by users of the website! :)

UI looks great! What tech stack are you using for build and deployment, other than Nuxt/Vue js?

This must be an American thing. Here, in Romania, I can walk in any cafe and I have free Wi-Fi at broadband speed. Actually in any place of business where you can sit at a table (malls, bookshops, even mom&pop shops have this).

I used to go to this place sometimes but it no longer exists:

https://workmode.co/san-francisco/workshop-cafe-fidi

This is neat! Small (I guess it’s a bug?): in NYC it lists Bellevue Hospital on 1st Ave in Manhattan as a “space,” which I guess technically it is, but I’m not sure they want you working from the lobby of the hospital.

A small foreword: I'm not criticize author work but the concept of nomadic work. I have nothing against nomadic life. I have much against working in public place with the screen visible, the keyboard visible, often connected on crappy WiFi sometimes even proxyed networks, ...

Working on a desktop means that screen and keyboard must be in a controlled and reasonably private environment, a personal boat is ok, a tent can be ok, a camper can be ok, but not a public place with people normally sit behind you. Also when you need to talk a quiet place is mandatory.

Long story short: WFH is NOT working in a café or on a beach. Similarly nomadic work is not open-space work. Those of open space kind should IMVHO classified as dangerous to the point that outside special case it must be forbidden.

People should absolutely be aware of what they're working on in a space where someone can see their screen. The "Hostile bid for Twitter" preso should almost certainly not be being worked on in a Starbucks. But a ton of us work on stuff day to day that is not remotely highly sensitive.

A small question: how many time you do not lock your screen in the office while going to the bathroom, to eat something, ... ? How many time while doing casual things you need to switch an instant to something else, quickly entering credentials etc?

Now you are in a café, you'll unlikely left a laptop on the table, but you might have an impromptu need to just look at something, perhaps not even entering credentials per se, but still showing something, even by accidents. MANY information have leaked that way. Many innocuous information per se led to discovering of something else valuable to attackers.

You can be perfectly aware 99% of the time, there is still a 1%. Not only: what's work for you? Recently I see a trend, a cohort of people who start working much in time terms and produce far less in substantial terms, they seem to have lost smartness, like what I've seen in SK/Japan where they toxic work culture create an incredible level of inefficiency masked as commitment and hard work, the hard part is the only true ones, the outcome is bad. In the western sauce is even worse: people start to be less and less effective without caring. Managers start to organize toward inefficiency and less smart behaviors encouraging them.

Work is a serious thing and should be done seriously witch does not means at all being available 24/7/365 for 99% of jobs, but being effective, concentrated, with all you need in hands, for a defined timeframe. Such timeframe can be fixed or flexible following targets, current needs etc. But nothing more and nothing less than that. Stereotypical laptop/craphone nomadic smart worker is the antithesis of that. Is the elogium of people who prefer living in a fiction snapping fingers and shrugging "ops, I spilled my drink" with the same involvement of "ops, I've just crushed a plain onto an NPP"... Pushing such model is obviously harmful. Is the tentative of creating a legion of stereotypical Ford model workers all easy to source and substitute, all cheap, all unable to see the big picture, all living on their sofa or in the metaverse (see virtual revolution movie from few years ago [1], for instance) such model gives the maximum easiness to the ruling class but also the worst overall outcome, the result is something that can't last longer and just live disasters behind for generations.

If we really want to progress, to work less, with less fatigue, with more free time we need the exact opposite.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Revolution

This sounds like a great way to overwhelm a person's local business with people who buy one beverage and then consume a table for the rest of the day. If I were a coffee shop owner I would be wary of this.

Yea I am strongly against that. I'll have to figure a way to make it clear to support the business by purchasing every now and then.

If the cafes are so nearby wouldn’t I already be familiar with them? But if they are too far, would I really travel to them just to work remotely? That’s a commute, which is exactly what I want to avoid.

Workmode is great for people traveling to new cities. A lot of the users are so called digital nomads

Why contact you? Because you are insightful unlike most and there is agreement on some of the insights you wrote. Do you have an email address or a contact method?

Old thread could not be replied to, probably because too many days past.

Is this prepared for worldwide locations?

I'm in South America and the nearest location is a cafe in Amsterdam. Is this due to a small data set or does it set you in Europe/North America by default?

Yes it is, the places are submitted by users of the website. Places are fetched from Google API when there are no places on Workmode. Turned this off tho, for now, because it slowed the backend

I don't think it is, or the quick fix the owner made is not working.

There appears to be a database collision.

If I search "Birmingham" the search tool returns a list including "Birmingham, UK" and "Birmingham, AL, USA" but choosing Birmingham, UK goes to https://workmode.co/birmingham which shows the map for Birmingham, AL, USA.

Maybe they could add short alphanum strings to the URLs to disambiguate (eg /Birmingham-D4F7A) or make each place it's own alphanum strings and add the name as an extra part that ultimately isn't needed (eg example.com/D4F7A/Birmingham).

I guess this is a solved problem but I don't know of a town level global naming scheme?

It shows me Amsterdam too, and I'm in the US. Seems like it just defaults to Amsterdam (doesn't use your location). Try searching for your city.

I tried to log in with Twitter, but it asked for a million permissions, including being able to follow and unfollow on my behalf. I'm not cool with that.

Great idea! But location-specific search doesn't seem to work: I searched for `Paris', selected `Paris, France' from the list, but nothing happened.

It's very slow. You should see a very thin progress bar at the top of the page.

The website was down/slow an hour ago. Should be fixed now! Sorry for that.

Awesome website. Though, I am disincentivized to add my favorite hidden gems, lest they become so crowded that I can no longer use them myself :)

Dan made this almost 10 years ago.

Nice idea. Obviously the issue is bootstrapping the database - for example Manchester, England, has plenty of suitable cafes but none appear.

I love the idea!

A couple of thoughts:

1. I'll never use social login

2. When you're on a city, it's not clear how to add a place (do you have to be logged in?)

Thank you!

You're right, I'll add a username password login method soon

No you don't have to be logged in. You can check into a place by clicking the button in the bottom right corner. This starts a speed test and review form. The results will be shared with other people.

However, you can add places without checking in when you are logged in.

Thanks! I'll check it back out in a couple of months.

This would be a cool plugin for Google Maps for essentially any public Wifi, wouldn't want to limit it to cafes.

I specify Vancouver it gives me the choice between WA and Canada. When I choose WA, it still gives me Canada. Ugh.

I... I don't get the appeal of working in a cafe. Isn't it better to work from home if remote ?

Why is it necessarily better to work from home if remote? It's not self-evident.

Some people don't have a great space to work in at home. Some people find home to be too distracting. Some people want to not be at home all of the time. Some people want to be in a more stimulating environment, to be able to interact with people. I currently work from home due to the pandemic, but I miss the physical separation of work life from home life. I plan to either work from a café or a co-working facility as soon as I feel it is safe to do so.

Might want to work on it: salem oregon gives me a map for salem, MA. And Albany, OR, gives me Albany, NY.

Nice idea in theory but this works better as a feature of existing maps rather than as a whole new website.

How did you seed the first cafe? is it all crowd sourced? I only see two cafe in Montreal, QC

Users can check into a place whenever they are located in a cafe. You can do so with the little button in the bottom right corner. You can also submit places when you're a (free) member, without checking in.

That looks very nice! Where did you get info about wifi speeds of cafes'?

I think it's supposed to be reported by users themselves when they are there, considering it prompts you to do that.

Exactly

Users can check into a place whenever they are located in a cafe. Checking in starts a speed test and a review form. The result gets shared with other people.

Really well done, especially the UI. Definitely going to put this to use.

Thanks man!

Genuine question: why do you go to cafes to use wifi or an outlet?

Where does the 'checked in' data come from? Foursquare?

From the users of Workmode

You can create an account and actually check into places on Workmode :) You can do so by clicking on the button in the bottom right corner. It starts a speed test and review form. The results will be shared with other people!

Amsterdam is somehow "Near Me" in Florida.

Doesn't show anything in São Paulo, Brazil :(

Just set up with your laptop in a local park under the shade of a tree. Ask the nearby hobos to bring you coffee.

not a bad idea, try to add a feature to allow for some real time user generated data like availability of seats, loudness etc.

Can I type my zip? UI is not intuitive....

ok but why. Why didn't you just look it up and never use it again, unless you move every 3 months.

For the people who haven't looked it up yet, or for the people who move every three months.

I could just google it rather than use a site that I have no trust in, once every 3 months.

I just search coffee on google maps

if you're in the PNW like me, you will find 80% espresso stands the size of a shed, and 20% actual cafes. it's pretty frustrating.

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 ;)

I read caves for some reason.

This sounds like workfrom

They're awesome!

500 Internal Server Error

Should be fixed now, sorry for that.. The backend fetched results from the Google API whenever none were available. Had to turn if off for now

> Places near you.

> 7,000 km away

looks unavailable to me

Should be fixed now, sorry for that..

it is! thank you

No, you built a website to crowdsource cafe data. I have tried every major city within four hours of me. Zero data.

The backend should normally fetch data from APIs if no results can be found. Temporarily disabled due to HN's traffic slowing down the website a lot.

Sorry for that.

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