Vermont cafe finds a ban on laptops and tablets earns better business

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/06/vermont-wifi-wireless-ban-starbucks-good-business

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While being glued to a mobile device has become a dangerously common part of 2014 life, a couple in Vermont has reaped financial rewards by rejecting 21st-century technology at their bakery, August First.

Wife-and-husband team Jodi Whalen and Phil Merrick banned laptops and tablets from their Burlington-based bakery earlier this year, after determining that laptop patrons spent much more time, and much less money, at the eatery than the average customer.

The pair decided to do away with tech as they faced more and more customers glued to their screens. Whalen said when they envisioned creating August First, they didn’t plan on it being a place where people settled for hours to do work.

“When we were dreaming of what August First will be – will it be this place with seven people staring at their screens?” Whalen told the Guardian. “Or would it be a place where people come to see people they know, chitchat, laugh?”

As a business owner, Whalen said cutting the cords was the hardest decision she’s had to make. “I literally lost my hair,” said Whalen, who is finally recovering from a bald spot that popped up as she and her husband decided to give customers a one-month warning that they would no longer be allowed to use laptops and tablets in the bakery.

Starbucks caught flak in 2011 when it admitted that it was covering electrical outlets in some New York City stores to deter freelancers and college students from camping out to use the shop’s free Wi-Fi. But the coffee behemoth’s tune seems to have changed this year, as it rolls out wireless charging stations in Silicon Valley to meet customers’ demands.

August First’s owners are not anti-technology by any means. The store has had active social-media accounts since it opened in August 2009 and used to hold tweet-ups. But the marathon Wi-Fi-workers were causing a clear dent in business. Whalen explained that while the average customer spends $15 and less than an hour at a table, laptop customers would spend around $5 an hour and could stay for four hours, sometimes causing more losses by spreading papers and books across four-person tables.

“We simply can’t survive as a business with so many people using their laptops here,” Whalen said.

This is a sentiment echoed by other cafes which have joined a trend that can include banning Wi-Fi all together, at certain times of day or on weekends, when dining spots get more traffic. While August First began with a three-hour lunchtime laptop ban, its popularity among regular customers, and the boon it gave to business, drove Whalen and Merrick to upgrade the short ban after a little over one week, in favour of announcing the total ban.

For August First, the ban resulted in 20% year-over-year sales growth in the early months, and now hovers around 10%, both an improvement from the company’s pre-laptop ban average of 5%.

Whalen said that despite signs posted around the bright-yellow bakery advertising the ban, she still has to enforce it about twice a week. Though patrons usually respond with a polite “Oh, OK,” some have responded by yelling.

“Anytime you make a rule that bucks the norm, there’s definitely going to be people who are upset by it,” Whalen said.