Pulling the Plug on Laptop Users at Kopitiam
Aug 15th, 2009 by Steven
A friend – a certain Ms L – who owns an upmarket kopitiam in a shopping mall lamented that many of her customers are ‘hogging’ table space.
“How’s that,” I asked.
She said, “They sit for hours, nursing a cup of coffee or tea and the surfing the World Wide Web – wifi is free – and thus don’t spend much.”
“Oh, I see,” I responded.
Ms L appears to have no solution to address her problem. These so-called low net worth web-surfing customers who hang out at the kopitiam are depriving her of more lucrative business from the dine-in crowd.
My friend is not alone. I recently read a WSJ article which says that many coffeeshop owners in the USA are facing a similar dilemma – a situation attributed to the current economic downturn. Out-of-job workers are idling at coffeeshops and surfing the web. To the extent that an increasing number of coffeeshops, especially the smaller ones, have locked up electrical outlets or imposed restrictions on laptop use in their premises, ranging from barring the use of laptops during certain hours to zero tolerance for laptop use. One establishment, however, allows the use of laptops provided the customer is ‘eating and typing at the same time’. Hmmm … not many folks can do both tasks simultaneously!