Oakland Cafe Owner's Banning Laptop Experiment

http://actualcafe.blogspot.com/

by drewsing • 16 years ago

43 32 16 years ago

actualcafe.blogspot.com

awa2• 16 years ago

Uhmm... So I believe that newspapers and other reading materials are also banned in his cafe

awa2• 16 years ago

Why the downvotes? Don't newspapers also reduce the interaction among customers... I don't mind cafes banning or discouraging squatters or switching off wifi, but why are they stopping people from checking email during breakfast even when they are using their own USB modem/connection.

drewsing• 16 years ago

Interesting point. I agree with you in that newspapers take away from interaction.

Laptops, though, can consume people in so many different ways, which makes it harder to approach a conversation with someone. You never know if someone is checking email, doing work, or just social masturbating on Facebook. There is a thicker "invisible social wall" when trying to approach someone with a laptop because you don't want to bother something important, so very few people even try to start a conversation.

When someone's reading a paper, you know they are interested in the day's current news, which makes an easy conversation opener. You know they aren't busy doing their taxes or writing a paper.

robryan• 16 years ago

I look at this another way, if I'm sitting at a cafe with someone else, usually a newspaper will stimulate conversation by commenting on articles.

Laptops on the other hand encourage communication with people not actually in the cafe, lowing interaction at the cafe.

Maybe a better middle ground was banning laptop use on a weekend beyond the quick checking of email, part of this would involve not allowing laptops to be plugged in.

smokey_the_bear2• 16 years ago

Cafe owners are certainly free to structure their cafes how they like. I actually appreciate that his laptop policy is clear, I'd feel welcome going there with a laptop on weekdays. Sometimes they make the power outlets inaccessible, or tell you to leave when it gets busy, and they don't post those policies so clearly.

I think it'd be neat to have a cafe with different sections of seating arrangements aimed at laptop users, chatters, newspaper readers where people weren't getting in each other's way.

masterj• 16 years ago

There's obviously room for many cafe structures.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6604801.html

This article goes into some detail about two of my favorite cafes here in Houston. One caters to people looking to work or study and has become a sort-of office for many, not to mention a great place to network among other technology professionals. I'll often work there when I'm sick of the office just because the atmosphere is so nice.

The other is a coffee bar and has the best coffee / espresso in town by far, and though you see the occasional laptop user, they are very rare.

I'm very glad to have both options and frequent them both a couple of times a week.

derefr• 16 years ago

I know that I, for one, never bring my laptop to cafes—instead, I pull out my phone and web-browse over 3G. Does the policy cover this (increasingly common) activity as well?

lsternlicht• 16 years ago

Sounds like Cafe Grumpy NYC

maukdaddy• 16 years ago

GREAT idea! I went into my local coffee shop here in Chicago last weekend, and EVERY single table was occupied with someone with a laptop. At least 25 tables, all with laptops, me with no where to sit with my food/drink.

joezydeco2• 16 years ago

Maybe I'm not in cafes enough to understand this, but how long are laptop users camping out on tables?

I can see if they're checking a quick email while having a coffee, but experiences I've had and maukdaddy above show that people are camping out a lot longer than that first cup. So are they staying all day? Are they purchasing more beverages?

carbon84• 16 years ago

I often spend all afternoon at various cafes, buying a $2-4 drink every 1-2 hours.

Most people with laptops spend 1-2 hours. You'll get people working longer in the mid morning and mid afternoon. People who show up with laptops at 2 (1:30-2 is a common transition period), for instance, seldom stay past 5/5:30 (another common transition period). 5 or 6 hours tends to be the upper limit; most people can only sit in the same spot for so long. Obviously, it's very rude to this without buying drinks at regular intervals.

At many cafes, people that are ruder about it are almost never regulars. Any cafe that's popular enough to be filled up will have a network of regulars. Regulars chat, share books, go out for drinks and, among the programmer regulars, chat about startups, collaborate on projects or hire one another for contract work. You'd probably not be able to recognize it if you go in and people are all reading and on laptops at the time, but if you start frequenting it you'd start to pick up on it

dlytle2• 16 years ago

I don't see what's so terrible about this, other than just knee-jerk moral outrage.

It probably also helps deal with some of the more disruptive elements of running a coffee shop with wi-fi, like squatters, torrenters, etc. From my time working at one, I recall that the most frequent laptop users could be pretty disruptive, and didn't spend much more than a typical customer.

dlytle2• 16 years ago

To clarify the above, generally we'd get three kinds of laptop customers.

The first were "on-the-way" types; they'd get a latte or mocha and a pastry, using their laptops while they did (on battery), then leave. Not really any personal contact, just a matter of business.

The second group would do the same, but would generally be friendly with the staff. They seemed to stay a little longer than the above, but it's possible that I only think that because they were recognizable and friendly.

The third group were what I called "squatters". They'd set up at a table like they owned it, and generally didn't care who they inconvenienced in the process. The squatters tended to stay for hours, and tended to try to stretch their coffee dollar; buying drip and adding a lot of sugar and milk, or doing the same with espresso to make a ghetto latte. More than once I found squatters who unplugged a grinder or a coffee machine to plug in their laptop, and then got ranted at when I informed them that I needed the outlet to provide service to others.

My experiences certainly don't prove anything, of course.

smokey_the_bear2• 16 years ago

I stayed in Pittsburgh for a month in a place with no wireless, and there was a cafe nearby that let me sit all day with my laptop and my dog! I was amazed, I drank as many mochas as I could, but I wished I could pay an hourly rate or something, I really didn't want them to feel taken advantage of.

spudlyo• 16 years ago

Popular Cafes here in Seattle (Victrola, Vivace) have been shutting off the wireless on weekends for at least a year now. People seem used to it.

Tiktaalik• 16 years ago

Vancouver's most popular local chain, JJ Bean, has never adopted wireless and they continue to be massively successful based on the quality of their product. They're rapidly expanding.

Many other notable cafe's such as 49th parallel also don't have any wireless.

I guess it's all up to local culture.

carbon84• 16 years ago

I've been deep in cafe culture for almost 20 years now (hanging out in them since I was just starting high school, and now I've been working from cafes and home for 3 years), mainly in the Chicago area.

There was a big transition over the past 10 years when coffee shops went from being smoking establishments mainly catering to young people and people on the fringes to being places where a wide demographic of people meet to talk and, for many people, work on computers. Laptops + wireless breathed new life into independent coffee shops at a time when they were being hit with smoking bans and still licking their wounds from a decade of starbucks expansion.

The transition to wireless has created a thriving cafe culture that's more busy than I've ever seen it. The cafes around me are so packed all day every day that I have to time my arrival to make sure I get a seat. 10 years ago they were mostly empty during the day. And it's not just more customers, it's better customers. Schizophrenics who sat with a single cup of coffee for hours while harassing other customers have been replaced by young professionals who buy double lattes.

The vast majority of coffee shops that didn't embrace or take seriously the transition to wireless have lost all of their customers and closed. It's been somewhat heartbreaking for me to watch some of my favorite coffee shops sit empty and eventually close down because the owners didn't take the wireless transition seriously and/or because they held on to an imaginary ideal about cafe culture.

Turning it off on weekends makes some sense; people aren't working there as much. However, it's a dangerous idea for cafe owners to take the anti-wireless sentiment too far. It reminds me of when I worked in academic libraries during the period they were still holding on to their luddite fantasies about the role of libraries. If you own a cafe and are considering this, you better make damn sure that your cafe has enough of these ideal, laptopless customers. I've seen a lot of cafes gamble on this and lose.

All that said, it's interesting that wireless has made coffee shops so popular that people once again value them as social centers.

joezydeco2• 16 years ago

wireless has made coffee shops so popular that people once again value them as social centers

You mean social with each other, or social with their online friends?

carbon84• 16 years ago

Social with each other. Neighborhood social centers, enough so that people care enough to even consider banning laptops.

imd• 16 years ago

I read a similar article a number of years ago, but at the time there were no negative comments (to my memory). Funny how attitudes have changed.

kaib• 16 years ago

Wow. After reading the article and some of the comments I'm realizing how different the cafe culture in Europe is. We have been living in the Bay Area for a number of years, so it's not like I haven't seen the droves of people sitting silently in coffee shops and tinkering away on their laptops. But the fact that this even generates a discussion.. :-)

A lot of European establishments I know have decided to never join the wifi movement. And even if many cafes now offer wifi it's very hard to spot people actually sitting with their laptops. Why would you want to, there are so many other things you can do in a cafe. Read, think, draw or just plain talk to the people in your party.

andyking• 16 years ago

I was wondering about this myself when I read the article. I live in the UK and while you very occasionally see the odd person sitting in the corner of a cafe on a laptop, it's nowhere near as common as it seems to be in the US.

It's certainly pretty much exclusively a city thing - I know what short shrift I'd get if I walked into a cafe in my rural town, bought a £1.50 cup of coffee and whipped out my laptop to spend a couple of hours working. (The lack of wi-fi isn't an issue - people here heavily use those little 3G USB "dongles".) I really couldn't say why there's such a marked difference, though.

Slightly bizarrely, last time I went in a McDonald's in some grim Manchester suburb they had large signs advertising free wi-fi. Don't we study and work hard so we get to work in places that aren't McDonald's?

gaius• 16 years ago

The target market for McDonalds is chav kids on pay-as-you-go phones who want to watch videos on Youtube. They don't seriously expect anyone to be working.

nfnaaron• 16 years ago

Wow, what extreme reactions on the negative side. It sounds a lot like smokers being angry at no smoking laws for bars.

There are two issues: 1) Whether a business has the right to limit what goes on in that business (and a worthy debate that is); and 2) How serious your addiction might be if it provokes that much anger.

Step away from the keyboard.

jessriedel• 16 years ago

Well, I think the smokers are angry because the gov't in some places has stepped in and made it illegal to smoke at any bar. That's quite different than a coffee shops deciding to not allow laptops in their particular store.

greenlblue• 16 years ago

I applaud the effort. I've always thought of cafes in a romantic way as conversation/idea factories but this illusion is completely shattered when I walk in and people are clanking away at their keyboards. So it's nice to see somebody is trying to bring back the romantic image even if it is just for the weekends.

gamble• 16 years ago

These cafe laptop bans remind me of the infamous ban on snowboarding at the Deer Valley ski resort in Utah. (And seem to provoke a similar response, even though 99% of their competitors don't have bans) I suspect they're more about marketing the business to a niche clientele than because the laptops are a problem in themselves.

lsd5you• 16 years ago

Snow boarders cause more accidents and add risk and higher insurance premiums to skiers around them. In europe at least, there is enough demand, mostly from older people for such a ban, in more than one resort (i believe).

I don't want to sound like some old-fuddy duddy (i'm not that old), but i was injured quite badly by a snowboarder.

_delirium• 16 years ago

I'm somewhat ambivalent on this. I can see the motivation, but it does sometimes seem to drift into an overbearing cafe owner trying to socially engineer exactly what kind of culture they want their cafe to have.

The local cafe here that banned laptops after 5pm to encourage more social evenings wasn't happy enough with the results, so subsequently also banned "studying" after 5pm, however you define that. The owner justified it by saying that his cafe wasn't a study hall, and there couldn't be a social scene in his cafe if it was overrun with college kids studying and doing homework.

At some point it becomes kind of ridiculous to feel like you're being socially policed by the owner, and it's more pleasant to just visit other cafes that won't look over my shoulder deciding if I'm being social enough or not.

rms• 16 years ago

Seems like a good idea for a few cafes to do, especially for PR purposes. I doubt this is going to be a trend though; people shouldn't take it too seriously.

Oakland Cafe Owner's Banning Laptop Experiment

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