I had earlier written about coffee shops here last year. And the subsequent year has seen my visits exponentially increase.
I have mostly been a Bru visitor, with some visits to Costa, Dibella when meeting others and found some rude, attitude when one tended to overstay the welcome.
Costa at one location actually asked people to leave because they had ordered one coffee between 4-5 people.
From a business perspective, I would completely agree with the approach, however the way you communicate is also extremely important.
If you constantly allow interviews, meetings, reviews, kitty parties – yes that is what mostly happens – and at times this occupies time, space whereby people actually leave due to lack of space, it leads to non returning of a customer who actually may be spending more with you, than a startup, agency, self employed professional.
In order to be fair, why should some space, tables not marked as ‘Paid/reserved’ where per table there is a bit of higher cost say 500-750 and people are allowed to pre book, reserve. Similarly, WiFi also. This can be used at specific location/time, will act as a deterrent to lounging and add to revenues.
I would be more than happy to avail this kind of service. How about you?
I write, review, rant, rave, on a variety of personal things. Call it Mindcasting. The written word has been my long time friend – jotting down thoughts based on what I read, heard, saw or recording my own experiences for later reference.
Any establishment should figure out the consequences of providing a facility before starting off on it. Provision of wifi means that people will linger – some will continuously order and thus underwrite the cost of wifi and some may not. As long as the establishment has a board saying “Free Wifi” they have no business to crib if people linger while using wifi.
Just like some establishments have cover charges, cafes in certain location can have minimum order if they find that people are unnecessarily lingering and thus driving away paying customers. Some people might dislike this policy but then it is cafe’s turf and they get to decide the rules that are most favourable for them.