So, I'm still in Philadelphia -- stuck here while Amtrak gets power going. Since I want to go online, and also want a coffee, I head over to the downtown Starbucks. I figure, what the heck, I'll spent six bucks on their usuriously-priced daily wifi.
But whoops -- the wifi isn't turned on at this location. The staff haven't been trained at all in dealing with data requests, so they're clueless. So I buy a coffee and leave to go back to ...
... Rittenhouse Square, the park where I found free wifi spilling out the windows of nearby citizens. This time, I'm logged on via a node called "marcie". So, two points come to mind:
i) Does anyone reading this know who "marcie" might be? I'd like to write a thank-you note -- she saved my butt today!
ii) Starbucks really ought to figure this wifi thing out. First off, as the folks at Boing Boing and Techdirt Wireless News have been arguing eloquently for weeks now, Starbucks ought to realize that they shouldn't be selling wifi -- they should be giving it away. Selling wifi is like charging for the lights in your restaurant. Moreover, they should train staff in making sure the wifi's on. I mean, the staff is trained to make sure the lights are on, aren't they? This stuff, I might point out, is also not rocket science. Half of today's wifi nodes work perfectly when you simply plug them in; a staff of rhesus monkeys could keep the data flowing at a Starbucks.
And why should they be giving it away? Because of the enormous number of clients they're losing by not doing so. I actually don't like sitting out here in the sunny park. I'm a geek -- generally horrified by the outside world, much happier in a dank, dark cafe. (I mean, there are people suntanning out here. What the hell, people? There's no freakin' ozone layer. There are like cosmic rays and shit pounding down on you. Go inside and play a video game, for chrissake.) I'm also a caffeine addict. So I would infinitely rather sit in a Starbucks and spent $10 on coffee for the morning while I surf. If they'd had their wifi running, they'd have sold several cups of coffee to me. In one single morning, I -- one single customer -- would have paid about 1/4 of the entire monthly cost of providinig wifi. But they didn't have their act together, so I bailed, and now I'm buying coffee from a greasy spoon near the park.
The logic of this argument is so screamingly obvious that I would imagine even the dimmest executive is going to pick up on it soon.
Posted by Clive Thompson at August 15, 2003 02:19 PM
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TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt3/mt-tb.cgi/444
i couldn't possibly agree with you more.
is starbucks blind?
Posted by: jared at August 15, 2003 9:45 PM
They don't want to give away wifi because then you would buy one cup of coffee and sit there all day. They need to keep customers flowing through the store. By charging, you can still sit there all day but at least they make money.
Posted by: Tom at August 17, 2003 1:28 AM
Tom,
That's the obvious, hard-core business answer to why? But Clive's arguing that the ridiculously low price of hosting a wifi network in-store can be recouped quite easily by building more value into a visit to their establishment. Not only do I get a cup of their "yummy" coffee, but I can linger over my e-mail for a few minutes before I actually have to shuffle on up to the office, or wherever...
The Starbucks on the corner near my previous job has no such wifi installed (and this in The Annex, a trendy Toronto neighbourhood!), but the locally-owned Lettieri store one block away does. Hmmm...I do like checking up on collisiondetection.net with a cup of joe...do I pay too much for too-strong coffee at Starbucks and wait until I get to work to plug-in? Or do I pay half the price, get a better cup of joe, and read clive's site while I wait for it to cool to the perfect temp? *AND* support a locally-owned business at the same time?
Seems to me that brand-behemoth Starbucks could at least attempt to fight Lettieri on one of those points, couldn't they?
Posted by: bud at August 17, 2003 6:44 PM
Tom,
sorry, just re-read that (hit post too quickly!) and it's a little snarkier than I'd intended...mi apologia...
bud
Posted by: bud at August 17, 2003 6:45 PM
Yeah, I'd agree with bud on this one -- the danger of Starbucks having to give up space to someone who parks for hours on one cup of coffee is less than the danger of losing customers who will only go where there is working, free wifi.
An interesting corollary is Barnes and Noble. Early on in building their megastores, they made it a policy of putting tons of big comfy chairs all over the place. People would sit down and read books, often for hours. Originally, some managers got worried that this was robbing them of business; if those people sat around reading books in the store, were they not buying them? Would it just encourage people to treat B&N like a library, a place to go and browse but not buy?
Apparently not. In the long run, surveys showed that people lounged around for three hours reading books would buy several of them. More importantly, the sight of readers lounging around reading made the store more inviting and convivial, and increased traffic in the stores.
I'd argue that free wifi would have precisely the same effect on a coffee shop.
Posted by: Clive at August 17, 2003 7:48 PM
Funny, these dudes in purple polo shirts and baseball caps were walking around the block with strap-on laptops that you could "use" while they told you what you were doing. Kinda freaky as these guys had to stand still like furniture while people poked at the laptop attached to their chests... whatever... point is that they were advertising wifi at McDonalds.
Now this McDonalds charges about 5 bucks per hour, but I have seen a few "execs" pumping away at their laptops during lunch--though not too many.
Posted by: Alfred Cloutier at August 19, 2003 7:26 PM
Okay,
using human beings as laptop furniture is wrong.
And as for Clive's mention of B&N above...
I used to work in a Chapters store (Canada's B&N wannabe) here in Toronto (110 Bloor, if you know it.) And we had plenty of really, really comfy chairs and couches to sit on. The idea, of course, is to encourage people to spend some time, feel welcome, and buy more things.
That might have been the spirit of the policy, but of course, people, being the sort to also exploit the letter of any policy, did so with gusto. There were certain customers who came in nearly every day right after we opened, brought one cup of Starbucks coffee (we had an SB location in our store) with them, and then collected a stack of books. Some of them spent upwards of 8 hours every day, reading books at Chapters (Sometimes we'd find their bookmarks inside where they'd left them, for the next day's reading). Leaving their seats only to use the washroom (which we provided), buy more coffees, and maybe nip out to get a bite to eat.
On busy days, these people and others would complain loudly that there were no seats!
In the summer, they'd complain about the air conditioning being too high (it could be sometimes), or too low (machines do break down now and then), or whatever else about our store that wasn't perfect for their reading time...
Please don't get me wrong, I don't give farthing for Chapter's costs in supplying these chairs, the couches, the cost of carpet cleaning when a latte succumbs to gravity, etc. But the toll on the staff, having to tend to these grown-up babies, was too much to ask of someone for $0.15-more-than-minimum-wage.
True anecote, revealed to all new staff in their first week of employment: A customer, firmly ensconced in their chair, surrounded by stacks of books, stopped a Chapters employee and asked them if they'd mind going down three flights to the Starbucks to get them another latte...
And then got upset when the employee politely declined!
Posted by: bud at August 24, 2003 2:36 PM
That is a totally informative story, sir. Thanks for it!
Hmmmmm ... it does sort of challenge my thesis, doesn't it? Also, interestingly, a new cafe opened up near my place in Manhattan this month, and when I went in the other day, I asked if they were going to provide wifi. "Yep," said the owner, "in a few days now." "Terrific," I said. "I'll be here for hours at a time, then!" He blanched: "That's what I'm afraid of." I had to explain that I was going to probably spent $20 on coffee and food during my multi-hour stays, instead of just buying a single coffee, and that I wouldn't be merely using his cafe as place to cadge free wifi. But the prospect of having a Chapters-bookstore-like experience clearly worried him.
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Posted by: julia at January 24, 2004 6:55 PM
Wow. you are getting a TON of comment spam. As much as I love wifi and use it frequently, I have to differ with the wifi-heads here. I think it's annoying to walk into a coffee shop and find that it's been turned into a cyber cafe. There's a difference between coming into a coffee shop and see people interacting over coffee and seeing a ton of people hunched over there laptops.
Look around internet accessible coffeeshops near a local college campus and you'll see what I mean.
On the flip side, it's interesting to see "We Have Wireless" on indie cafe windows. It's really the equivalent of how stores in the '50s advertized: "ICE COLD AIR CONDITIONING"
Posted by: J at April 14, 2004 2:25 PM
Good point about the air-conditioning example!
Sorry about the comment spam. It really ran out of control before I was able to get the blocking software working. Now I have to take an afternoon out and clean the place up. Sigh.
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Posted by: lev pyotr at March 9, 2005 11:40 AM
i couldn't possibly agree with you more.
is starbucks blind?
Posted by: jared at August 15, 2003 9:45 PM
They don't want to give away wifi because then you would buy one cup of coffee and sit there all day. They need to keep customers flowing through the store. By charging, you can still sit there all day but at least they make money.
Posted by: Tom at August 17, 2003 1:28 AM
Tom,
That's the obvious, hard-core business answer to why? But Clive's arguing that the ridiculously low price of hosting a wifi network in-store can be recouped quite easily by building more value into a visit to their establishment. Not only do I get a cup of their "yummy" coffee, but I can linger over my e-mail for a few minutes before I actually have to shuffle on up to the office, or wherever...
The Starbucks on the corner near my previous job has no such wifi installed (and this in The Annex, a trendy Toronto neighbourhood!), but the locally-owned Lettieri store one block away does. Hmmm...I do like checking up on collisiondetection.net with a cup of joe...do I pay too much for too-strong coffee at Starbucks and wait until I get to work to plug-in? Or do I pay half the price, get a better cup of joe, and read clive's site while I wait for it to cool to the perfect temp? *AND* support a locally-owned business at the same time?
Seems to me that brand-behemoth Starbucks could at least attempt to fight Lettieri on one of those points, couldn't they?
Posted by: bud at August 17, 2003 6:44 PM
Tom,
sorry, just re-read that (hit post too quickly!) and it's a little snarkier than I'd intended...mi apologia...
bud
Posted by: bud at August 17, 2003 6:45 PM
Yeah, I'd agree with bud on this one -- the danger of Starbucks having to give up space to someone who parks for hours on one cup of coffee is less than the danger of losing customers who will only go where there is working, free wifi.
An interesting corollary is Barnes and Noble. Early on in building their megastores, they made it a policy of putting tons of big comfy chairs all over the place. People would sit down and read books, often for hours. Originally, some managers got worried that this was robbing them of business; if those people sat around reading books in the store, were they not buying them? Would it just encourage people to treat B&N like a library, a place to go and browse but not buy?
Apparently not. In the long run, surveys showed that people lounged around for three hours reading books would buy several of them. More importantly, the sight of readers lounging around reading made the store more inviting and convivial, and increased traffic in the stores.
I'd argue that free wifi would have precisely the same effect on a coffee shop.
Posted by: Clive at August 17, 2003 7:48 PM
Funny, these dudes in purple polo shirts and baseball caps were walking around the block with strap-on laptops that you could "use" while they told you what you were doing. Kinda freaky as these guys had to stand still like furniture while people poked at the laptop attached to their chests... whatever... point is that they were advertising wifi at McDonalds.
Now this McDonalds charges about 5 bucks per hour, but I have seen a few "execs" pumping away at their laptops during lunch--though not too many.
Posted by: Alfred Cloutier at August 19, 2003 7:26 PM
Okay,
using human beings as laptop furniture is wrong.
And as for Clive's mention of B&N above...
I used to work in a Chapters store (Canada's B&N wannabe) here in Toronto (110 Bloor, if you know it.) And we had plenty of really, really comfy chairs and couches to sit on. The idea, of course, is to encourage people to spend some time, feel welcome, and buy more things.
That might have been the spirit of the policy, but of course, people, being the sort to also exploit the letter of any policy, did so with gusto. There were certain customers who came in nearly every day right after we opened, brought one cup of Starbucks coffee (we had an SB location in our store) with them, and then collected a stack of books. Some of them spent upwards of 8 hours every day, reading books at Chapters (Sometimes we'd find their bookmarks inside where they'd left them, for the next day's reading). Leaving their seats only to use the washroom (which we provided), buy more coffees, and maybe nip out to get a bite to eat.
On busy days, these people and others would complain loudly that there were no seats!
In the summer, they'd complain about the air conditioning being too high (it could be sometimes), or too low (machines do break down now and then), or whatever else about our store that wasn't perfect for their reading time...
Please don't get me wrong, I don't give farthing for Chapter's costs in supplying these chairs, the couches, the cost of carpet cleaning when a latte succumbs to gravity, etc. But the toll on the staff, having to tend to these grown-up babies, was too much to ask of someone for $0.15-more-than-minimum-wage.
True anecote, revealed to all new staff in their first week of employment: A customer, firmly ensconced in their chair, surrounded by stacks of books, stopped a Chapters employee and asked them if they'd mind going down three flights to the Starbucks to get them another latte...
And then got upset when the employee politely declined!
Posted by: bud at August 24, 2003 2:36 PM
That is a totally informative story, sir. Thanks for it!
Hmmmmm ... it does sort of challenge my thesis, doesn't it? Also, interestingly, a new cafe opened up near my place in Manhattan this month, and when I went in the other day, I asked if they were going to provide wifi. "Yep," said the owner, "in a few days now." "Terrific," I said. "I'll be here for hours at a time, then!" He blanched: "That's what I'm afraid of." I had to explain that I was going to probably spent $20 on coffee and food during my multi-hour stays, instead of just buying a single coffee, and that I wouldn't be merely using his cafe as place to cadge free wifi. But the prospect of having a Chapters-bookstore-like experience clearly worried him.
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Posted by: julia at January 24, 2004 6:55 PM
Wow. you are getting a TON of comment spam. As much as I love wifi and use it frequently, I have to differ with the wifi-heads here. I think it's annoying to walk into a coffee shop and find that it's been turned into a cyber cafe. There's a difference between coming into a coffee shop and see people interacting over coffee and seeing a ton of people hunched over there laptops.
Look around internet accessible coffeeshops near a local college campus and you'll see what I mean.
On the flip side, it's interesting to see "We Have Wireless" on indie cafe windows. It's really the equivalent of how stores in the '50s advertized: "ICE COLD AIR CONDITIONING"
Posted by: J at April 14, 2004 2:25 PM
Good point about the air-conditioning example!
Sorry about the comment spam. It really ran out of control before I was able to get the blocking software working. Now I have to take an afternoon out and clean the place up. Sigh.
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