Coffee connectivity

I know my way around the various coffee shops in the Valley they call Silicon—excepting Starbucks, whenever I can avoid them. (But then they’re pretty much all of a muchness, a dreary, synthetic, bitter-tasting muchness; so maybe I do know my way around them.)

And it’s been my observation ever since coffee shops started offering free Wi-Fi (again, Starbucks tried muscling its patrons to pay for the privilege, but eventually had to cave) that all kinds of people use them as an alternative (or perhaps even as a primary) workspace. I’ve been on con-calls for more than ten years where one or more participants was in some coffee shop, for a number of reasons.

Now, I understand that giving away Internet access is basically inviting people to park their cheap asses at a table in your establishment for hours, for the $3.00 you charge for a cup of coffee—especially if your refills are free. (Starbucks? Ha!) So it’s got to be a dicey trade-off for management: do we offer free Wi-Fi and risk table hogs, or do we not offer it and lose business from all those people who won’t come in without it?

(It’s curious that coffee shops in Europe—London and Wiesbaden being two locations—are charging customers by the minute, not the purchase. Presumably they’re assuming that people are there more for the connectivity than for the coffee. I shall follow this potential trend with interest.)

As you might imagine, here in the Valley they call Silicon, it’s the rare occasion when you see someone sat at a coffee shop table without a laptop or tablet. Even when there are several people sat at the table engaging in acts of pseudo-IRL-sociability. Clearly, free Wi-Fi is kind of a basic cost of doing business here.

So it’s really a puzzle to me that local bakery-café chain Le Boulanger is so lackadaisical about the Internet access in its outlets. (Or maybe it’s that they’re just cheap.) They went from a system where you just connected to their network to requiring that you log in via an online app; but getting that web page to come up is actually quite dodgy. (The app requires that you log in via Facebook, Twitter or an email account. Seriously? I use other people’s email addresses.)

I quit going to the one in Mountain View because of this inconsistent access—and because when their network went down, their staff just said, “Yeah, it’s not working.” No back-up, no work-around; basically, “Not our problem.” (Even when it was operational, I swear it was powered by a couple of elderly and very tired hamsters, barely managing DSL speed.)

And there’s a Panera Bread about a mile away with a bitchin network.

Yesterday I was in the Boulanger store in Cupertino—with Mountain View, probably the vortex of techdom, what with Apple and Google representing the hardware and software meccas—and again ran into that “you must log on to access our network” combined with “but we’re not going to display the log-on page for you” conundrum. And I also ran into that “not our problem” staff attitude.

I asked a fellow typing on his Mac if he was using the restaurant Wi-Fi; he told me it hasn’t been working reliably for months. And he’s told the staff about it, repeatedly, but received nothing but the shrug…

And here’s the thing: within a couple hundred yards of this place, there are a Panera, a Peet’s, a Philz and a Paris Baguette, all with free Internet access. (There’s a Boudin Bakery, too; but they don’t offer Wi-Fi at all.) Even techies can manage to walk that distance.

It’s an interesting strategy—advertise that you have Internet access, but make it nigh-on impossible for your customers to use it. I suppose it saves a few coins here and there, but it will eventually cut into your repeat business.

In fact, I just give up on Le Boulanger; it’s not worth the annoyance of showing up, either alone or to meet up with someone, and not know whether you’re going to be able to do real work while you’re there. And believe me—the quality of the food is not such that it compensates for that.