I'm a writer. I go to coffee shops, sit there, and drink as little coffee as possible, staring into my little book while taking up a table and spraying a Cone of Introverted Quiet everywhere I turn. I am the bane of the regular coffee shop. But what if there were a shop that tailored their business model to me?
Instead of charging for food or drink, and then letting you have the space for free, how about switching the two? Charge for the table by the hour (or with a monthly subscription), and then have free little snacks and drinks to go along with the seat. Limit customers to those with a creative/insightful streak (yes, get resumes), and disallow anyone from sitting alone or ignoring the people next to them for more than ten minutes. Perhaps even invite famously loquacious people to hang out there (in the exact same way as the regular patrons do.) Thus is born a sort of "idea club"--like TED, but every day, and peer-to-peer instead of multicast.
On the same vein, don't buy newspapers (or anything else topical) for reading material; buy hardcover books, fiction and non-. Require that people read them out loud if they're reading (thus, basically, giving a reading of the book to whoever's nearby.) Don't have a wi-fi connection; do have a "room librarian" that will look up the answers to questions on a hard line, and is ready to explain the answers in detail. And so on.
So, to summarize your Cafe 2.0 business model, if I may...
Prospective customers submit resumes to you for the privilege of being allowed to rent table space at your cafe. Those who clear that hurdle remain under constant threat of eviction unless they talk to everyone around them every ten minutes. Customers can only read hard-copy material that you prescribe, and must read it out-loud to the entire room. And they must relinquish all web-surfing mobile and laptop devices, to be replaced by a single "room librarian" who will personally attend to any web search requests.
OK.
Take this concept to Sand Hill Road. Untold riches await you.
I admit, it's only for a certain kind of person--the kind that would be talking to the people around them more often than every ten minutes anyway, and would rather have a conversation about a topic than look it up themselves. Extroverts. The resume thing, and eviction thing, are just what they sound like: being in a club. Haven't you ever been in a club? They have membership requirements and you have to maintain the membership by doing all sorts of crazy annoying/boring things. But people do them, because it's better than not being in the club. I'd even say that there would have to be a Fight-Club-esque rule about the place to prevent it becoming some sort of super-prestigious gathering place where everyone there was only there to say that they went, and no one is actually enjoying themselves. But I digress.
I was a bit off in describing the reading material concept: whatever people wrote on the whiteboard above the book-pile, and remained up there for longer than a day without being erased, would be purchased at the cafe's expense and added to said pile the next day. Same with food and drink suggestions. It's not supposed to be about the cafe; it's supposed to be about the other people in the cafe. The cafe itself is unimportant. You're paying to be put in spitting distance of people who love thinking, and are willing to help you out on creative, technical, or even philosophical projects if you reciprocate. It's sort of like the physical manifestation of a compatibility-matching dating site, but without the actual "dating" part (but I mean, if relationships start there, hey...)
Writing this for the second time this week on HN...I should just copy and paste ;)
Coffee shops: expensive rent for owner because of prime retail location, foodservice business (therefore more requirements with less space to work with).
Workspace/office rental: not so expensive rent for owner since it can be located anywhere there is commercial real estate, is not a foodservice business (less restrictions, more space). Bonus: not as much noise and more actual office space with wifi and ethernet and places to plug in. Additional bonus for you: some of these workspaces will have newspapers and other reading material for you to check out without having to buy.
Both: offer tables and coffee and food for people who want to sit down and chill.
What a lot of people SHOULD be doing is going to a workspace (i.e. in los angeles there's theOffice and Blankspaces off the top of my head) and actually paying per table or workspace by the hour/day instead of sitting at a coffee shop where that per table pricing model is completely infeasible because of what a coffee shop inherently is. Sadly demand for them isn't as high as I would have thought, but the problem has been approached before in a way that doesn't bankrupt the owner (aka a coffee shop with an hourly per-table/seat charge).
What about an automated coffee shop? A machine that remakes coffee when it gets low with a reserve of beans it grinds automatically, dispensed in different sizes by coin or bill. Have a machine on the inside and on the outside, facing the street. So you can have your romantic atmosphere and make a lot of money selling coffee quickly to people on the go for the mere cost of a machine.
But there is only so much space for romantic atmosphere inside a shop (the main issue, really), and existing automated coffee machines are..limited (then again, most people would probably just get ordinary coffee). On the other hand, that sounds like an interesting thing to hack together for home if only I wasn't in love with my french press :)
Also when a similar topic came up last week, there was mention of charging a fee (i.e. $20/day) for use of the table, wifi and a bottomless cup of coffee.
It would be interesting to see both of these implemented in an actual coffee shop, cause they're not necessarily something I have seen and are certainly one way to approach the problem.
OT but the coworking spaces that seen to succeed (e.g. attract a base of full-time coworkers) are providing more than a desk space for rent - they are involved in the local community. For example, CubeSpace in Portland hosts the monthly meetings of the Ruby users group. The space is more of a salon (in the Hemmingway sense) than a office space.
Instead of charging for food or drink, and then letting you have the space for free, how about switching the two? Charge for the table by the hour (or with a monthly subscription), and then have free little snacks and drinks to go along with the seat.
4 points by noonespecial 7 days ago | link | parent | flag
Seems like there's a market for a place full of private cozy nooks where $20 buys a bottomless cup of coffee, an all day wifi pass and a plug at every table.
The problem is that street-level storefront space is expensive. Street-level shops - including coffeeshops - rely on continuous flow of customer traffic. A people-storage business model does not work at street-level. It might work if the space to be rented were not at street-level.
Well, it's not really my ideal; I was just trying to imagine up something that didn't already exist (in the forms presented herein.) I actually like these better ;)
I like the idea of charging per table and letting the drinks and snacks be free, but I think encouraging and/or forcing a particular 'cozy' environment would be a bad idea.
As a college student I like to go to coffee shops to study. It's a great way to get out of the house, maybe meet people, and get stuff done. I always buy something there but I feel bad because I believe I stay (with my laptop on the shop's free wifi) for a long time - probably costing more than I've contributed with my purchase.
I would gladly pay a monthly membership fee and pop in and out knowing that I'll get whatever I'm in the mood for without any more expense. In fact, I would probably end up paying more for the 'free' drinks because I wouldn't show up enough to take advantage of the free food.
I wouldn't like it if there was no wifi or if the rules about talking to people and reading out loud were enforced. Of course customers could still be screened somehow. A membership card could be swiped or scanned for the drinks (maybe even tracked) and an ID and password for the wifi would keep the freeloaders away, and if any customer becomes too unprofitable (too many drinks or slipping drinks to friends) their membership could be easily canceled.
workspace! sounds like you're in LA...you should go check out blankspaces or theOffice ;)
They both do have a monthly membership fee and to them, drinks are probably the least of their concerns with regards to profitability. Unlike a coffee shop, where space is expensive and hard to come by. Both have wifi and leave you alone...in fact, probably enforce leaving others alone too :)
At the University of New Mexico's Engineering Library (Big main library also has these) they have these little alcoves with closed, locking doors that grad students use to write/read their thesis and so on; can't be bigger than 5x10 feet. They're hard to get and always in high demand. When I was an undergrad I wanted one but of course they weren't allowed for undergrads.
Instead of charging for food or drink, and then letting you have the space for free, how about switching the two? Charge for the table by the hour (or with a monthly subscription), and then have free little snacks and drinks to go along with the seat. Limit customers to those with a creative/insightful streak (yes, get resumes), and disallow anyone from sitting alone or ignoring the people next to them for more than ten minutes. Perhaps even invite famously loquacious people to hang out there (in the exact same way as the regular patrons do.) Thus is born a sort of "idea club"--like TED, but every day, and peer-to-peer instead of multicast.
On the same vein, don't buy newspapers (or anything else topical) for reading material; buy hardcover books, fiction and non-. Require that people read them out loud if they're reading (thus, basically, giving a reading of the book to whoever's nearby.) Don't have a wi-fi connection; do have a "room librarian" that will look up the answers to questions on a hard line, and is ready to explain the answers in detail. And so on.