Others can just pay maybe half of what one pays at other wifi stations and recover remaining from the products they buy.

Then its just simple math and common sense: are you in the coffee shop business or are you in the wifi business. Which one makes the money.

If you are convinced the laptop loiterers are not worth it then charge them a fee that makes the lost table space worth it. If they are your best customers then give them flyers to hand out to their friends and a free drink while you’re at it.

** HERE’S AN IDEA (albeit a frat boy one): Rent cheap warehouse space so you can park 500 laptoppers in the same room and sell coffee to them too. If you had the right space: location, price, etc it might work.

Bill Mossburg

The mornings were great, but around lunch time, it would get so cold I could barely stay there. Upping the A/C could’ve been a strategy to counteract the body heat from the high volume of people at lunch, but they got about the same volume for b-fast and dinner, so I don’t think that was it.

Another thing to do is have a limited # of working outlets. My batter life is about 2.5 hours, so that’s about as long as I would stay!

What is it about “good will” that business owners don’t understand?

JP has the right idea: keep it simple! “*Free WI-FI during non-peak hours.
*Charge for WI-FI during peak hours.”

But since that’s a change in a policy that customers have become comfortable with, the change needs to be advertised well in advance — like, weeks in advance — with prominent signs, flyers, table tents, and even staff telling customers as they deliver drinks and food. The customer in your anecdote, who clearly had been blindsided, was rightfully angry. If I were her, I’d never go back, and I’d tell all my friends, too.

When someone comes in and can’t be seated, maybe even have a staffer stand up and say, “User so-and-so, will you give up your seat? How about you, user such-and-such?”