Coffee-shop pitch change helped founder unlock traction for laptop campers
iwantproductmarketfit.substack.com
iwantproductmarketfit.substack.com
Then there’s a shift change and again I feel I need to prove I’m not a freeloader.
1. It’s much cheaper if you’re regularly working 8-hour days outside your apartment.
2. I hated having to pack up my stuff just to use the bathroom or step out for a call.
The ones near me are secure and have free (passable) coffee, which is all I really need.
- In the morning, I work at the Airbnb/hotel. I start the day without worries about packing/unpacking or preparations: a solid three to four hours of work. (Requirements: get a room with a workstation and a good chair. Tables are usually easy to find, but if the chair isn’t good enough, buy one.)
- Natural stop to have lunch, usually with a longer walk.
- Start work again around 2 PM at some coffee shop and order a coffee. Another three hours of solid work.
- Natural stop to use the bathroom (always a problem as a solo nomad, but not anymore), stretch my legs, and head to a different coffee shop.
- Final batch of work. Order something light to eat. No more caffeine. Another three hours of solid work.
In the end, I can get between nine and ten hours of solid work per day. I spend around three hours in one place, so I didn’t notice any uncomfortable looks.
I also don’t rely on power outlets or local Wi-Fi never. The laptop needs to last the entire time, but it’s easy because it’s only in the afternoon (around six hours, not the whole day). For Wi-Fi, I always get a good mobile package with unlimited data if possible. This makes it easy to sit anywhere, really.
My setup is usually my laptop, an iPad as a second screen, earbuds, and a mobile phone. It works like a charm.
We’ve weaponized furniture against the homeless, why not against the laptop class?
If you want people to just sit and eat - you're a restaurant.
If you want people to just order and leave - you're a food stall/truck.
Cafe's have always been the intermediate. A place to sit and read/discuss/write/work/hang out. While also occasionally going to the counter to buy small food or drinks.
If you're annoyed by this... don't run a cafe.
Simple & sane rules like "you have to order something to sit at a table" are hardly novel.
The project could be catastrophic for cafes for unforeseen reasons, but those are surely not going to be the same as for Airbnb. You'd have to come up with a plausible threat scenario, otherwise your extrapolation of the analogy has no substance.
You might be right. I read that as a minimum spend on wifi originally.
Later i’d just tip heavily up-front.
But then again I rarely work out at coffee shops or gas stations; usually only when stopping for a drink/meal anyway.
Ah, but perhaps they were just protecting the neighbors from the noise? Well, it was in the financial district. On the ground floor of a bank, which never had a problem with all this.
I personally stopped going to my favourite cafe because all the tables were taken up by people using laptops, I think the value proposition is just not there. You are always going to be better off catering to people who are just dropping in for 5-10 minutes over someone who spends several hours and maybe buys 2 things and jeopardizes a table which could have been used by 10 people.
> You are always going to be better off catering to people who are just dropping in for 5-10 minutes over someone who spends several hours and maybe buys 2 things and jeopardizes a table which could have been used by 10 people.
I assume there's a balance. Never run a coffee shop but it seems that a lot of the sales are takeout, so exactly what does and doesn't go on in your seating might well be a secondary concern. If you prioritise folks staying for 5-10 minutes you might just end up with a lot of empty tables.
It's unfortunate I have to completely stop going to some cafes with a no laptop policy for three times one hour per year.
The idea pitched in the article would probably only work with Dutch or central Europeans in general, who unfortunately lack a lot in culture after WWII. Europeans love rules and regulations, and will follow them and take any opportunity to abuse things when there's no explicit rule. Such as overstaying your welcome with your laptop in a café. If this idea with a minimum spend would be pitched in a more mature culture, people would just scoff at it and not visit such a café.
This article seem to be centered on Dutch culture (Which I have discovered the hard way is one of the most stingy frugal culture you could ever imagine).
[1] https://www.moneyonthemind.org/post/how-the-dutch-handle-mon...
I don't think stingy fits the bill per se since that would be saving money at the expense of others. Almost like the coffee shop customers who are not buying anything?
The easiest way to beat competition in Europe is to just train your staff for a couple of days to be friendly and give nice service. Because nobody else does that.
That would be to the benefit of the shop - scaring away non paying customers who are hogging a scarce resource is a good thing, not a bad thing.
If I'm a respectful customer with a laptop and I sit down and some staff comes and does this, I would simply leave. People will go to cafés where they feel welcome.
I've been in cafés in New York that looked like open plan offices because everyone was on a laptop (and there were no free tables), and many cafés in London now have laptop policies so I think the problem is broader than you suggest.
> I've been in cafés in New York that looked like open plan offices because everyone was on a laptop (and there were no free tables), and many cafés in London now have laptop policies so I think the problem is broader than you suggest.
I agree it's bad taste to sit there with your laptop when there's no tables available, and establishments who suffer from this should implement laptop policies. But I've also been many times to cafés which would be completely empty if it wasn't for the people working on their laptops.
A popular restaurant / café near me found the perfect solution. They ban laptops during lunch hours until early afternoon.
I don't think this would be the negative you're implying it to be. That empty seat would be of much more benefit to the café.
The first coffeehouses established in Oxford were known as penny universities, as they offered an alternative form of learning to structural academic learning, while still being frequented by the English virtuosi who actively pursued advances in human knowledge. The coffeehouses would charge a penny admission, which would include access to newspapers and conversation.
That's in the 1650s. Then 60 years later in London the coffeehouses were involved in the rise of printed daily newspapers, they distributed them. (Several of these had advertiser in the name, and were more ads than news, because access to adverts in the early days was desirable and worth paying for.)
Internet cafes were social once! I remember making an exciting group excursion to one to participate in some kind of debate over IRC. Pffft.
The best model I’ve seen is to just have some tables marked as “no laptop”.
My guess is that coffee shops fall into one of two categories:
1. Those in high foot traffic areas, where a no-laptop policy helps maintain turnover, or
2. Those in low foot traffic areas, where it makes sense to do everything possible to fill seats and cultivate an appealing, vibrant environment.
See also cybercafes/internet cafes.
The proliferation of laptops means that people are bringing their own workstations.
A user books a space using Badge, and promises to spend, and the Cafe owner pays Badge a commission on a pledge. This seems ripe for a disputes process (the customer didn't spend) and Cafe owner actually not being "happy to pay that."
Let's follow the money.
The sales generated for this thing come from somewhere. The idea is the coffee shops make more by forcing "squatters" to order one drink an hour or whatever. That additional money, a portion of it, goes to pay for this app that enforces it.
I think that money is better spent making the coffee better, paying the baristas better, and maybe even allowing customers to "squat".
Extracting money out of everyday life to make our world less friendly and more expensive.
If anything this should "displace" (obviously it won't) some of the salary of waiters, who were before tasked to go yell at people with laptops, and now no longer need to do it. So it shouldn't theoretically take from the "money" for better coffee, but rather smooth out the atmosphere in the coffee shops
I would say we should just have the uncomfortable interaction.
Why do we need to pay to make our world less interpersonal?
If it’s the latter, it’s not really rent seeking as much as trying to enforce an existing social contract.
It's not cut and dry, someone using a laptop doesn't reduce the spending of others. It's not a formal restaurant where you need the table to make the sale.
> Extracting money out of everyday life to make our world less friendly and more expensive.
Isn't this what people are doing if they take up a seat in a cafe without buying things? They're making it so the cafe has to charge more to actual customers to survive.
Maybe a simpler solution is what I've seen some coffee shops discretely implement: chairs that are uncomfortable to sit for hours.
This solution by itself would function like this, but you are leaving out a crucial point that it also doubles as a hub to advertise your café as a place that will welcome you as long as you pay.
The client can know beforehand which cafés are ok with you using it as a cowork space, and cafés make sure they don't have dead space, which in many parts of the world is very expensive.
Those who disagree with the system can always default to just paying for an actual coworking space.
I am friends with the Cafe owner on my street.
He has a ton of regulars that hang out there all the time, myself included. I spend a lot there, so do they. Often times they are having their real estate sales meetings there, startup discussions, etc (you know, doing business).
They all, including me, known the owner well, we are friends.
Something like this would completely ruin that dynamic. It would push away the customers like me and the others I described that regularly spend a lot there in favor of getting $5 from the "randos".
Ever done the napkin maths for a coffee shop? It's not good. Especially with the way rents have been going...
In Canada a ton of Starbucks locations have closed. Other brands too.
You need to sell a ton of $5 coffees to pay rent, nevermind anything else... This idea that businesses are a common good and business owners should feel bad for not being destitute is why fewer people are opening them (at least here, in Canada).
The way to handle the problem you describe is to be thoughtful about the prices you charge.
If it costs you X amount to be profitable, you should be charging Y for your coffee. Not coming up with a cattle prod to sell 2 more cups an hour.
that's like saying gmail or google.com is legacy services