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'We don't want to be an office:' Café owners are pulling the plug on WiFi
When HotBlack Coffee opened in downtown Toronto a year ago, it took a risk few businesses would dare take in today's online-driven world: it turned off the WiFi.
"Every day people come in and ask for it," says Jimson Bienenstock, the café's co-owner.
Still, he hasn't wavered.
"In the short term, it hurt us," Mr. Bienenstock says. "It took us longer to become established, but once we reached critical mass, it has become a self-fulfilling virtuous circle."
While most cafés offer free WiFi, including large chains such as Starbucks, McDonald's and Tim Hortons, HotBlack is among a small but growing number of independent coffee shops choosing to ditch or limit Internet use. By not offering WiFi, they're hoping to create more of a community atmosphere where people talk to each other instead of silently typing on their computers.
If coffeeshops come to discourage people working, perhaps that activity can shift to libraries.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 02 2017, @03:18PM
I don't know how common this is, but I've been to a couple places that did this in the U.S. I think one gave a code/coupon for an hour of free wifi, and another gave 30 minutes. If you bought something else, you got another code. If you wanted more wifi but didn't want more food, I think you might still be able to do it, but access went through some sort of paid service that I assume the coffee shop got a cut out of.
Solved a huge problem at the first place, because it was in a neighborhood close to a lot of college student off-campus residences, and they had people who'd show up literally every day around 8-9am, buy a small coffee, and sit there for most of the day. If you came in mid-morning, or for lunch, or after lunch, you had no place to sit. Instituting the "wifi ticket" policy drove a lot of those people away, but they actually still managed to pack the tables a lot of days for large portions of the day even with frequent turnover... I'm sure they made a LOT more money.