It’s generally understood that owning a coffee shop is done more for love than money. Making ends meet with coffee’s very low margins is not for the faint of heart. It is far from the get-rich-quick scheme some take it to be. This has led many cafe owners to get creative, finding new ways to bring in money.
One idea that has emerged—or rather, re-emerged—is a subscription of sorts to your coffee shop of choice. Instead of buying a drink (or maybe even on top of), would you pay to hang out at a coffee shop if you were planning on being there for an extended amount of time.
The idea isn’t entirely a new one. It has existed in some form or other since at least the early-2010s. Some folks may even remember buying monthly memberships to a coffee shop’s wifi, which was a short-lived experiment that never really took off. Nonetheless, a new article in Slate finds the idea of some sort of subscription service or hang-out fee for those looking to take up a spot for a good portion of the day remains appealing to many coffee shop owners.
For Tim Taylor, the owner of Chicago’s Pedestrian Coffee, the idea of a seat fee is a mathematical one. “To be in a healthy and profitable place financially, we need to do approximately $20 per seat, per day,” Taylor tells Slate. “On a weekend, we do this. On a weekday, we generally don’t.”
Taylor suggests—but has not implemented—something like a $20 fee for a seat for up to four hours. It would include wifi and “likely” a drink and a pastry. This would ensure that someone won’t be able to buy a coffee and camp for hours on end, ensuring a per-seat viability for the company. It would also help ensure there is more seating for other customers who don’t plan on staying that long.
Another option that is currently being used at New York City’s Devoción is time-limited wifi access. Whenever you buy something, you get a receipt that has a code to access the cafe’s wifi for a limited time, and once the limit has been reached, you have to buy something else to continue surfing.
It’s a difficult issue to navigate. On one hand, you want to be a communal hub, where folks can meet up and hang out. But on the other, you don’t want a roomful of campers who only buy a coffee and proceed the dominate the space that would otherwise be utilized for its intended purpose. Admittedly, my kneejerk reaction was to balk at the idea of a seat fee, though I really park it at cafes for long amounts of time. Paying for a seat while I finish my coffee certainly seems extreme, but that isn’t quite what this is. Maybe it’s the happy medium. Free seats for those who are there for the coffee, paid ones for those who are there for the workspace. If it’s the difference between my favor cafes staying open or closing, then I’m all for it.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
