It is 1:42 on a Wednesday at a café on the Eastside. Eight of the twelve tables are occupied. Seven of those eight have a laptop on them. Five of those seven have a cold mug from a coffee that was finished two hours ago. Two of the seven have nothing on the table except the laptop. The customer with the laptop is on a call. The customer at the next table is also on a call. The room sounds like an open-plan office at a software company in 2014.
A couple walks in at 1:43. They are visiting from out of town. They wanted to sit and have a coffee and split a pastry. They look at the room. They look at each other. They turn around and walk out.
The wi-fi camper customer is in your café right now. The visiting couple is not. The owner has not decided which one is the customer the café is for, and the room is showing it.
This is the wi-fi camper question. Every Santa Cruz café has it. Almost no owner has answered it explicitly. The room is being shaped by the absence of the answer.
The customer who is buying time
The wi-fi camper is buying four hours of seating for the price of one drink. They are not a bad customer. They are a different customer than the customer the café was designed for.
The café was designed for a customer who orders a drink, sits for twenty to forty minutes, and leaves. The economics of the room assume table turnover. A table that turns three times in an afternoon produces three drinks of revenue. A table that does not turn for four hours produces one.
The camper is occupying the seat. The camper is not producing the revenue the seat was modeled to produce. The camper is also taking up the space that the couple from out of town would have used if it were available.
The math is real. The math does not make the camper a bad customer. The math makes the camper a different customer with a different economic model than the one the café opened with.
The owners who have decided that the camper is welcome have built the room and the menu around them. The owners who have decided that the camper is not welcome have built the room and the menu around the turnover customer. The owners who have not decided are running a room that is half built for each.
What the room is communicating
The undecided room is communicating two things at once. The camper sees the wi-fi password on the wall, the long table by the window, the outlets at every seat. They read the room as designed for them. They settle in.
The turnover customer sees the long table covered with laptops, the campers on calls, the cold mugs, the energy of a workspace. They read the room as designed for the camper. They walk out.
The room is doing the work of telling the customer what kind of café it is. The room is currently telling two different stories to two different customers, and the result is that one of them stays and the other one leaves. The owner is making the decision by not making the decision.
The fix is the explicit choice
The fix is choosing.
The owners who choose the camper build the room for it. The menu has heartier food that justifies the four-hour stay. The drinks include the kinds of bottled and refillable options that match a longer visit. The prices are calibrated for a customer who is going to occupy the seat. The room has more outlets, better wi-fi, and seating that supports a long stretch. The marketing reflects the choice.
The owners who choose the turnover customer build the room for them. The seats are smaller. The wi-fi is available but not advertised. The outlets are limited. The tables are sized for two people and a small plate. The energy of the room favors a thirty-minute visit. The marketing reflects the choice.
Both choices are valid. The hybrid is the problem. The hybrid is what most Santa Cruz cafés are running, and the hybrid is producing customers who do not feel like the room is for them, in both camps.
What the hybrid is costing
The hybrid is costing the café in three ways.
The first is the visible cost of the camper occupying the seat. The seat is producing one drink instead of three. The cost is the missing two drinks of revenue per camper, per shift, per camper-occupied seat.
The second is the invisible cost of the turnover customer who walked out. They are not in the data because they did not buy anything. They are also not in the data on the trip back, because they did not come back. The cost is the long-term acquisition cost of every couple from out of town who turned around at the door.
The third is the cost to the staff. The barista is being asked to serve a camper who orders one drink and stays for four hours, in the same room as the couple who is being passed through quickly because there are only two tables open. The staff is running two different service models at the same time. The standard is being held by a team that is being asked to deliver two products without being told which one is the priority.
Where the standard slips
The standard slips because the question has not been answered explicitly.
The owner thinks they want both kinds of customer. The owner has not done the math on what serving both kinds means structurally. The room defaults to the path of least resistance, which is the camper, because the camper does not push back and the turnover customer just leaves.
The fix is the answer. The owner decides. They decide which customer the café is for. They build the room and the menu and the policy around that customer. They communicate the decision in the design of the space.
The decision is not absolute. A café can welcome campers from 10:00 to 12:00 and prioritize turnover from 12:00 to 2:00. A café can have one section for campers and another for turnover. A café can charge a small fee after the second hour. A café can do any of a dozen things, as long as the choice is explicit.
The cafés that have made the choice are the cafés where the customer who walks in knows what the room is for and decides to stay or leave on accurate information. The cafés that have not made the choice are the cafés where the customer who walks in is confused, and the confusion is degrading the experience for both camps.
The Santa Cruz piece
The remote work population in this town is significant and is not going away. The café is a real workplace for a meaningful percentage of the local workforce. This is a fact about the market.
The fact does not require every café to be a remote workplace. It also does not require every café to be a turnover restaurant. The fact requires the owner to decide.
The undecided café is the one that is full of campers at 1:42 on a Wednesday and is also empty of the couple from out of town who would have stayed for forty-five minutes and tipped twenty percent. The decided café is the one that is set up for whichever customer it has chosen, and is selling out that visit accordingly.
The decision is the standard. The standard is the room. The room is the answer.
If you want a read on what your room is communicating to the customers who are not staying, that is the work we do. We sit at your café for ninety minutes at 1:42 on a Wednesday and we tell you what the room is telling each customer who walks in the door.