No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users

[question everything]

AUGUST 6, 2009

No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users
They Sit for Hours and Don't Spend Much; Getting the Bum's Rush in the Big Apple

By ERICA ALINI
WSJ

A sign at Naidre's, a small neighborhood coffee shop in Brooklyn, N.Y., begins warmly: "Dear customers, we are absolutely thrilled that you like us so much that you want to spend the day..." But, it continues, "...people gotta eat, and to eat they gotta sit." At Naidre's in Park Slope and its second location in nearby Carroll Gardens, Wi-Fi is free. But since the spring of 2008, no laptops have been allowed between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. weekdays and 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. weekends, unless the customer is eating and typing at the same time.

Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables -- nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for hours -- and as shop owners struggle to stay in business, a decade-old love affair between coffee shops and laptop-wielding customers is fading. In some places, customers just get cold looks, but in a growing number of small coffee shops, firm restrictions on laptop use have been imposed and electric outlets have been locked. The laptop backlash may predate the recession, but the recession clearly has accelerated it. "You don't want to discourage it, it's a wonderful tradition," says Naidre's owner Janice Pullicino, 53 years old. A former partner in a computer-graphics business, Ms. Pullicino insists she loves technology and hates to limit its use. But when she realized that people with laptops were taking up seats and driving away the more lucrative lunch crowd, she put up the sign. Last fall, she covered up some of the outlets, describing that as a "cost-cutting measure" to save electricity.

So far, this appears to be largely a New York phenomenon, though San Francisco's Coffee Bar does now put out signs when the shop is crowded asking laptop users to share tables and make space for other customers. Some coffee shops say they still welcome laptop users, if only because they make the stores look busy. For some, the growing number of laptop-carrying customers with time on their hands is reason to expand. "I had to add more outlets and higher speed" in early June, says Sebastian Simsch, 40, the co-owner of Seattle Coffee Works. Starbucks Corp. coffee houses, which in some cases charge for Wi-Fi, and bookstore chain Borders Group Inc., which always charges for Wi-Fi, don't have any plans to change their treatment of laptop customers. Neither does bookstore giant Barnes & Noble Inc., where the Wi-Fi is complimentary.

(snip)

Customers' frugality has reached extremes in the recession, the 40-year-old Mr. Soltani says. Some patrons show up with a tea bag for a free hot-water refill or quietly unwrap homemade sandwiches, he says. The Soltani brothers tried to adapt by adding sandwiches to their assortment of pastries and chocolates two months ago. And they want to be able to change the atmosphere after dark. "We lower the light, and it's chocolate, wine and couples holding hands," says Masoud's brother Bahman. "What's the guy with the laptop doing here?"

Some customers are sympathetic. Norm Elrod was "devastated," he wrote on his blog -- called "Jobless and Less" -- when he spotted "little plastic covers on the electrical outlets, secured with little padlocks" at Espresso 77. "But I knew why they had done it," the 37-year-old unemployed marketing manager says. "I used to be one of the abusers," Mr. Elrod confesses on his blog, "sipping a two-dollar cup of coffee in a to-go cup for hours." But, he says in an interview, now he practices what he considers better coffee-shop etiquette, lingering over his laptop during off-hours and spending more money.

(snip)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124950421033208823.html (subscription)

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1

[BadgerKid]

1. Been going on for a few years here

at two of the national chain casual restaurants. Wifi is either disabled over the lunch period or restricted to a single half-hour session during same.

That author should get out of NYC more. :hi:

[lurky]

2. Be friendly to the baristas and tip them a buck

when you buy coffee. They will let you hang out if they actually like having you there. They understand -- they aren't exactly rolling in dough themselves.

If the place gets really crowded, do the courteous thing and make room. Keep buying coffee if you are there for a long time.

I have a coffee house where I like to read or do work on the laptop, and I am amazed at what assholes some of the customers can be. They are rude to the staff, don't tip, then sit for hours having loud phone conversations while other people are trying to read, work, or just hang out.

[kaylynwright]

3. hot water

People bring their own teabags, get free hot water, and take up space that a paying customer could occupy? Woah. That's rude. Why would you go to a place with food, then bring your own? Just don't go there. I was out eating the other day, and this woman came in with a sandwich and ate in there and didn't buy anything. Not even a drink. And it was very crowded in there as well.

[question everything]

4. Several years ago we visited Chicago

we were on Michigan Ave, at Barnes & Nobles purchased a book and wanted to grab a cap of coffee. All the table were taken, several with people working on their laptops. So we left.

[juno jones]

5. There was a woman who used to do that all the time at one of the restaurants

I worked at. She's come in with a gaggle of friends and when the others ordered food, she had the chutpah to pull her sandwich from her bag and insist we heat it for her. We did, mostly for the benefit of her paying friends since there was enough of them en masse to not wish to upset...

Bitch never tipped either.