Here's a nice little piece I just ran across on the etiquette involved in working from a coffee shop.

 

I think it hits some good points, though there are a couple of misses too. The big one I noticed was the idea that staying all day was ok. Staying all day, with a reasonable number of purchases made, may be ok or it may not... depending on how busy the shop is and the owner's policy. I wish they'd said that sometimes it really isn't ok.

 

Another miss was that tipping the barista was an effective substitute for buying product. A lot of owners would probably take issue with that.

 

Anyway, just thought I'd share. Anybody else have thoughts on this?

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Great article - I was shocked as well to see that they feel it is ok to stay all day and about the tipping. There is always a little bit of a disconnect between owners and staff. I'm not comfortable about using a shop as an office in most situations - 30-60 minutes is a ong time to hang out in a store for any reason.  

 

I think it depends on the concept for the space.  A lot of coffee houses (different than coffee bars, or espresso bars) actually want their customers to hang out for awhile.  A few hours, even, especially if there is an act on a weekend evening. 

Mike Spence said:

Great article - I was shocked as well to see that they feel it is ok to stay all day and about the tipping. There is always a little bit of a disconnect between owners and staff. I'm not comfortable about using a shop as an office in most situations - 30-60 minutes is a ong time to hang out in a store for any reason.  

 

I came in expecting a discussion about what to do on a camping trip if I'm the only one who remembered to bring a French Press. Do I have to share with the less fortunate? Imagine my surprise when tents and fires had nothing to do with the actual conversation.

 

When I was working for the 'Bux, we had a lot of people who hung around all day. I didn't mind - in fact, I'd often offer new "campers" a complimentary french press of coffee to encourage them to come back and bring their money more often. People in my store made my store look popular.

 

That said, when I was working at a 24-hour location, we had actual campers, who actually tried to sleep off a hard night on our couches. That was a no-go.

 

 

Nathanael - that was my first thought too (hiking boots, fishin poles).

This discussion rages across not only the coffee shop industry, but also in the restaurant industry.

One of the old-school tricks for calculating operation performance is constantly asking yourself how much profit each seat makes on bottom line every hour. Mostly, campers deduct from that data point.

Another way to calculate your cafe performance is to ask yourself how much revenue and how much profit each square foot of your shop makes on an annual, monthly and daily basis.

CNN just posted this as part of their Netiquette series.  CNN - Netiquette  More of the same. It can be nice to use tools to setup a stores internet connection to show some general rules before that customer can use the WiFi.  

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