Babbage | Coffeeshops and the internet

Coffee, concentrate

In more and more cafés owners are making customers disconnect

By G.F. | SEATTLE

THE regular hiss of the espresso machine turning grounds into gold isn't all that distracts you at a coffeeshop. Internet access and power outlets available in most cafés in the developed world might sap your productivity as much as it beefs it up.

Most independent and small chain coffeeshops have had a long-running battle between offering Wi-Fi and the consequences. A typical tale from store managers is of patrons who buy a single cup of coffee or tea and blockade a four-seat table for eight or more hours. A space full of such people turns kaffeeklatsch into a silence broken only by the tapping of keyboard keys. In others, however, customers use the network briefly, and turnover is brisk.

Café owners have talked about their discomfort for years. This correspondent filed a report about a Seattle store, Victrola Coffee and Art, in 2005, just a few years into the unwiring revolution, in which Starbucks was then at the vanguard. Victrola's founders didn't like a sea of checked-out customers, and started turning off Wi-Fi on the weekends. The experiment led to success, they said. People who otherwise avoided the café came in, and the place became chummy on Saturdays and Sundays. In the years since, hundreds of articles have appeared about similar cases in which a coffeeshop turns off the signal, and sometimes blocks electrical outlets.

The tone has shifted more recently, though, as café owners are both turning off the signal and banning the use of computers and mobile devices entirely. Nick Bilton, the New York Times' Bits blog editor, was banned from reading a book on his Kindle at one establishment a few day ago, despite protesting that he was, well, reading a book. The Actual Café in Oakland opened last year with laptop-free weekends. The owner, Sal Bednarz, wrote in an email, "I think it's fascinating that we've allowed technology to creep into so much of our lives that it can feel like an affront when someone (like me) asks us to step away from it for a short while." The Los Angeles Times last weekend filed a thoughtful entry on the same topic, looking at California coffeeshops that pulled all the plugs. Dan Drozdenko, the owner of the Downbeat Café in Los Angeles, says, "People come here because we don't offer it. They know they can get their work done and not get distracted." Now, that's something new.

In an earlier piece we described the benefits of disconnecting. For tasks that don't require constant monitoring of live data—such as stock management or minding server operations—productivity seems to soar when the constant bright shiny ball of the internet is nowhere to be seen. People often leave the house or office to free themselves of conditions that stifle productivity, only to walk into a venue that lets them tweet, like, surf, and otherwise avoid focus. Could it be that the offer of single-tasking and contemplation is a selling point when drinking coffee or tea? A moment's respite from the BlackBerry buzz, the iPhone alert, the Android annoyance? Only if one remembers to turn off one's 3G connection, too.

(Photo credit: AFP)

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