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It's one cup of coffee, how much could it cost?
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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Since the pandemic started, Starbucks and other shops with cozy seating + WiFi have become essentially “work from home” quasi-third-spaces. I haven’t been everywhere but I noticed it was extreme when I passed through Texas and throughout the Midwest. I am pretty sure it’s an everywhere (in America) thing, plus the rising cost of coffee, and inflation in general
Faced with this, these cafes have two choices. One is to double down on laptop-free rules, either permanent or on weekends only. This can piss off customers and lose business. The other option is to double down on being an office space with a coffee bar. Starbucks and others have been moving this latter direction for years now. Drive-thru was always a ripoff, but now it is truly beyond the pale to order from these places if you aren’t planning to spend a few hours using the amenities.
This has been a thing since wifi became free in cafes. In my experience it's a thing around the world in cafes with dedicated seating. Especially cafes with electrical outlets. I don't think anything will make it go away. There's a demand for third spaces that has nowhere else to replace it right now
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/coffee-shops-limit-wi-fi-to-discourage-laptop-hobos/
The magnitude of it is on a different level since 2020. Dialectics quantitative change producing qualitative change yada yada
There have always been people on laptops in cafes but WFH introduced a new and mainstream reason to do it on a large scale. Combined with economic challenges in the coffee industry, it’s a no brainer to rebrand as a workspace instead of a specialty coffee shop
This might be somewhat region dependent. In many cities, if you go in any coffee shop on a weekday, it will have 100% of seats occupied by people on Zoom calls
it sounds like the cafés need to install call booths and charge half-hourly for those