I understand it's tongue-in-cheek, but you're actually describing a real problem Starbucks and other casual-style restaurants (McDonalds) have in Seattle. The downtown business districts are almost completely overrun by homelessness and many places in the area have stopped offering seating and only offer counter pick-up and standing tables/rails.
The words "steal" and "bathroom" reminded me of a funny case when hand dryers started disappearing in bathrooms of several shopping malls in a large Russian city. In all cases, there was the same person with a large bag filmed nearby, but as there is no camera inside, it is difficult to understand if he did anything or not. Guess unsupervised tablet (aka "monitor") would not stay there for long.
At this point I wonder why Starbucks hasn't diversified and started building actual coworking spaces in addition to coffee shops. They look like they should be in an ideal position for that.
They'd have to charge people for using those, which people won't be eager to. The point of coffee shops in this regard is that the use as free coworking space is "parasitic" on the space being financed by the café business.
The point of coffee shops in this regard is that the use as free coworking space
Incidentally, back when I was doing startups, there were free coworking spaces in the under-utilized portions of the Seattle convention center. Big, squishy chairs, fast wifi, and power ports galore.
It was like a self-service micro tech incubator, and helped me bootstrap a company that lasted over a decade. The State of Washington more than got its money back in taxes.
I wonder how often they try large floor plans. Most Starbucks I see try to keep things small. What happens if you make it a bit larger, like a small library? I wonder if the increase in foot traffic and sales would offset the cost of extra real estate. They could keep it free, but also somewhat cross over into coworking.
(as long as the campers are considerate) it's also low cost. even prime location starbucks have large lull periods through the day, prime for campers, even though only spending $5-10.
when people feel entitled to take up 2 spaces for hours while families roam for seats is when it's too far
This one[1] has a meeting space that can be closed off from the rest of the store, with a TV or projector, and I’m pretty sure they’ve got a copier or at least an all-in-one printer.
Free, common-use things are awesome - until the tragedy of the commons sets in and ruins it for everybody. This is true of so many things that start free and then later require payment. And everybody gets mad about it.
Chicago has "residential zone parking" for the areas of the city that are primarily residential. For $30 per year per car, you get to park on the street in your local zone (2-3 city blocks). Nobody else is allowed to park on the street in that zone. For visitors, you can buy a sheet of stickers for $1 per sticker that enable 1 day of parking. But you can't buy more than 3 sheets in a month (they keep track).
I've always wondered why NYC and other big cities don't do this. It costs so little, yet makes it much easier to park where you live.
Density. If you paid for a parking permit then there's some expectation that a parking spot will be available for you near your house. Except in NYC residents outnumber parking spots 20:1 in some neighborhoods.
Tragedy of the commons is caused by out of sync motives. Like a mismatch in protocols that people speak, which is partially explained by culture and upbringing (only partially of course). That is, tragedy of the commons is a symptom not a cause. Not something that happens just by virtue of something being a part of the commons. The more people you have, the more opportunity for those to be out of sync too
In the case of the coffee shop concept, I’d speculate since there’s not hundreds or thousands of years of history in Korea to establish a proper protocol for what is acceptable to do in a coffee shop, anything goes. Until Starbucks can establish from an early age that coffee drinking as the only culturally appropriate thing you should be doing in a coffee shop, and you may feel morally corrupt, be socially ostracized, or go to hell for your sins otherwise
They'd rather that than an empty seat, especially if that person is turning up 5-6 days/week.
Most coffee shops where I live (London, UK, specifically out in West London) are at best 20% full through most of the day, that's a lot of dead real estate not paying for itself.
When I tried working out of coffee shops a bit some years ago the "etiquette" seemed to be ~1 drink/hour to pay for your seat. I don't like coffee that much, so was consuming more like 0.66/hour (i.e. around 2 drinks every 3 hours), and people were fine with that, as it was effectively a rent payment of £20/day, or £100/week, which is a little under what a hotdesk would cost me in the same area but with a lot more flexibility (never pay for idle!), and of course its good margin sales for them.
Of course, they could just say "no laptops". There's a pub chain in the UK that did that (Sam Smith's - no screens, no swearing), but the rule is not widely followed or enforced and where it is the pubs are empty far more than the ones that welcome customers.
For a busy cafe that's always short on seating and struggles to keep up with fulfilling orders, they want nothing to do with laptop squatters.
Every other case I imagine it's desirable to have at least some regulars presumably employed enough to be working from a cafe using modern tech.
One common problem I've noticed is van lifers and other quasi homeless folks spending ~zero money stinking up the place just for the free power and internet.
Now that battery life and cell-tethered internet is so good, some of my favorite urban cafes have adopted a no-outlets no-wifi approach, while still having tons of seating and allowing folks to be present with their computers all day. They just have to provide their own internet and power, which serves to exclude the true parasites while selecting for folks with $$ to spend because they have state of the art gadgets with their own unlimited data plans.
Customers attract customers. Even if some customers are not spending a lot of money, they bring in other customers who more than make up for them. This is the reason why so many coffee shops go out of their way to provide power outlets near every table.
When I worked out of free co-working spaces in Asia I would buy lunch and breakfast from them too, both to socialize with other patrons and to not lose my seat.
I work from a coffee shop a good bit. They don’t care for the most part. Assuming you tip reasonably, be nice to the staff, don’t be annoying, don’t negatively impact the other customers, be helpful when the occasion calls for it.
It's hard to run a global business. Different people have such different ways of doing things. Every day, tens of millions of people run pen tests on Starbuck's rules. And Starbuck's front line of defence? A bunch of shy college student baristas.
Or have actual public places? The Cafe's are there to serve coffee, it's just courtesy as business model to let you hang around in the premises and when the business model starts to fail in some way they adjust it.
After university, the most I miss is the actual places that are mine to use and are made for hanging around or working and not necessarily consuming anything.
> After university, the most I miss is the actual places that are mine to use and are made for hanging around or working and not necessarily consuming anything.
You just pre-paid for the consumption in your tuition fees.
> The Cafe's are there to serve coffee, it's just courtesy as business model to let you hang around
Traditionally it's the other way around, the drink is a by-product of a public house where people can gather. Could you imagine a bar where people are just supposed to drink and leave?
Japanese Manga Cafes / Internet Cafes give you all you can drink coffee and tea for hourly pricing, and usually comes with a PC and a private booth. I'm not sure how much of a thing they still are though, but they were big in the 2000s and early 10s
If this is such a pervasive problem you'd think the article would have had no problem sourcing a photo of this instead of some generic phone ogling group?
I've been living in Seoul for a few months now and often work out of different Starbucks and have never seen anything like this here. I spent a similar amount of time in Seattle and saw much "worse" set ups at the coffee shops there.
I thought about Improv Everywhere recently - they had some great things in the early 2000s.
Re watching this, at about 1:16 one of the agents looks familiar. "Huh, she looks kinda like Aubrey Plaza". Then the credits come on: It was actually Aubrey Plaza.
Amusingly, those are all available at a cafe i’ve frequented in Seoul.
They’re used as background dressing but they’re also available to use. It’s criminally underused and i’d love to do it but i have no idea what i would make with it.
South Korea is cyber café country. If you open a café there, people expect some specific services.
I guess the fact people come with PCs and printer is a way to demonstrate how they don't want this part of US culture and would like to keep theirs. So either adapt and start offering PC bang in South Korea or go home.
Starbucks Coffee Korea Co. is a Korean company, owned by a Singaporean wealth fund and a Korean company. US Starbucks provides licensing and supplies, nothing more.
So this is a decision by a Korean company, not an American one.
Or you know, you could just not go there if you don't like the place rather than be a prick to people who work there and customers who like going there.
Having lived in Korea, I have always enjoyed the cafe culture. Starbucks there is known for accepting you to work there. Although I haven't seen anyone bring a printer yet, some do bring extra stuff such as a stand for their laptop that take up a lot of space.
The only thing this article mentions is that Starbucks prohibits people of bringing stuff that would take up more than a single seat, which seems reasonable?
In Tokyo, coffee shops seem to have embraced the work culture. Tables and seating have been adapted to working, and you often get a receipt with the time when you are expected to leave printed on it. Most (if not all) people in a Tully's in Tokyo are there to work.
Seoul is similar. Many Twosome Places have study desks and some of the chains known for small footprint also have bigger locations for meetings and work (Ediya Coffee Lab).
I never understood why people who are frugal would go to Starbucks in Korea to work, when local chains are beside them, have cheaper drinks and their desk/chair setups are less hostile to working.
A food court near my house has slowly turned into an improvised coworking space.
It's relatively quiet (as food courts go). For a while, the café even offered a whole day's worth of coffee for a reasonable price.
What I don't get is why the increasingly empty malls in my state don't incentivise this more. At the very least they'd earn something from parking and some food and drinks.
The solution is to bring back cybercafes, or cafes which were set up up to go online. Such culture existed in the 90s but was then ended by the widespread online accessibility by home ADSL and later mobile internet.
The 'problem' with those for remote workers is that you pay per minute/hour in a cybercafe - in a normal coffee shop you can just nurse one coffee for hours and pay a single low cost (and get a coffee).
I can't remember the name of it now but back in 2010s there was an 'OK' managed drop-in office space you could rent for £10 a day in central London - which came with free coffee and printing - I haven't looked at the prices lately.
Wow, I'd be curious about the details if you can remember.
I was working from cafes in London at that time, and I would have loved to find a place like that. I had to either use actual cafes (free besides getting a coffee and maybe a sandwich, limited privacy and security) or pay for a dedicated space, generally with too much tedious bureaucracy. Maybe I misremember, but to get prices as low as £10/day I think you had to commit to a large number of days per month. I don't recall anyone offering low prices a la carte.
Cybercafes are already a big thing in SK, but why is the above comment downvoted? I, for one, miss net cafes very much. They used to be big in Greece, and I made many many dear friendships in small, cozy net cafes.
I can recount hilarious and even heartwarming stories; turns out that having a cafe (i.e. leisure space) with computers used by people in close proximity makes for dynamics and interactions that you cannot recreate with remote connections.
I am more than happy to "take my coffee and fuck off". But I'll do it with a 50 cent instant coffee from a supermarket, not pay 10$ for it just to not be able to relax in a coffee shop.
Hah, probably comparable to running a desktop for an equivalent amount of time - most ebike chargers are 100 - 200 W, and the bikes usually have a battery between 0.5 - 1 kWh (which in my area would be 5 - 10 cents). Less disruptive though, assuming they detached the battery and left the bike outside.
Dude it's middle school math. Average pedal assist e-bike battery, estimate at 500 watt-hours. Electricity prices at my home are about 20 cents per kilowatt-hour.
(0.5 kwhr) * (20 cents/kwhr) = 10 cents. With an additional 10-15% due to charging system inefficiencies (lost to heat). 11 cents.
It can be good exercise to do an 8th grade level word problem every now and then.
The actual arithmetic is easy but most people don’t know about the batteries in e-bikes. They might not know about the electricity prices at the top of their heads either.
You could google those…but it seems easier to just use GPT if you’re going to google that stuff anyway.
What makes you think they’re desperate? IME people from Asian cultures sometimes have ways of thinking that strike at least me personally as basically alien. And then my brain interpolates their motives wrong based on biases that are shaped by western versions of politeness etc.
Who the eff lugs their desktop machine and printer to Starbucks instead of just use it in their house if that's a workable option? You'd have to be sorely motivated by something. Asians are in fact human dude.
> Starbucks South Korea implemented a policy asking patrons to not bring bulky items like desktop computers and printers into stores.
.. says the caption under a Getty image which shows no such thing! No wonder people don't respect the media.
The only reason I would click on this sort of thing would be to see a video or image of Koreans bringing their desktops and printers to a Starbucks and setting them up.
Without that, I can imagine it just fine without relying on any words in the article.
Searching YouTube, I'm not able to find any videos footage of people with desktops that they brought to a Starbucks in South Korea. The story is circulating and there are various new stories in various languages from various news networks, but all have only generic footage unrelated to the story.
In Japan I’ve seen at Starbucks: a guy bring in a giant power supply and plop it down on top of the table to power his tower and monitor like it wasn’t the most sociopathic thing in the world. And another guy used to set up six or seven screens at his table to “daytrade” — turns out he wasn’t day trading at all, they were all running videos of fake daytrading / stock tickers. (I had a friend at that Starbucks who would give me all the details; they had to ban him eventually for disrupting / getting surly with other customers).
There's already a large offering of such spaces in Korea. You have cafes where you can bring your laptop and work in peace, there's pc cafes / pc bangs which are more for gaming but provide a desktop, there are places where you can rent co-working spaces or spaces for co-working that you can use with a membership.
Co-working spaces of all types are ubiquitous in Tokyo FWIW. Near my midsize station I had about 10 different providers in a 10 minute walking radius, some with multiple locations even!
Most have a selection of plans to choose from: hourly, daily, monthly, etc
I chose a bit more upscale one without a fixed seat. I pay ¥1100 (7.5 USD) I think for each day I use it, with a monthly minimum spend of ¥2200. It comes with free mediocre coffee/tea. It is consistently clean and library quiet as people follow the posted rules including minding the volume of their typing and headphones.
I would be surprised if the situation in Seoul was significantly different.
They actually have exactly that for gaming: a "pc bang" like a internet cafe. I wonder if it has been tried in earnest for co-working. You would think it is an easier business so long as the demand is there.
There's also study cafes, which are aimed more primarily at students but often have working spaces for laptop use. These are quiet spaces to focus compared to something like Starbucks or PC bangs though.
Isn’t that how most coworking spaces work already? I’ve worked from a lot of them, and it always worked like that: I check in when I arrive in the morning, and when I check out at the end of the day, I pay for the number of hours I have spent there (often capped to a maximum of 5 hours or so, even if I stay longer).
My original comment was an offhand observation, but the difference under assumption is that co-working spaces require a contract/commitment, whereas the scenario I had in mind was no commitment other than paying for each time of use.
Maybe that's already a thing; my sense of self is not dependent upon being "right" in this matter.
Why would anyone except a gamer buy a desktop computer anyway. I guess some people still have their old computer and a lot of south korenas are gamers, but laptops are just better overall because of the portability.
If people bring printerS pural then starbuck could "just" have a free-ish printer
> Why would anyone except a gamer buy a desktop computer anyway?
Because you get a beast of a machine for the price of MacBook Air, and because you prefer looking at a big ultrawide monitor instead of alt-tabbing like crazy on a 13" screen, and you prefer a full keyboard and a proper mouse to the cramped layout they stuff in laptops because there's no room.
Oh, and maybe a proper sound system.
And it can also double as a NAS (more physical space for storage) and home server.
Not everyone needs portability all the time. For when I do, I have a Thinkpad I can get by with, with Tailscale VPN so it has access to the workstation.
(for anyone curios, yes, it's still cheaper than top-of-the-line laptop + nas/home server combo, but my main reason is ergonomics).
Anyone who doesn't need to work while traveling actually.
A desktop is both cheaper (at the same spec), while being much more durable due to being upgradable and reparable.
Sure laptop win in terms of portability, but since we can do so much on our phone, I don't really feel the need to bring a computer with me everywhere.
Show me that quiet, 16 core, 5 GHz, 128 GB RAM laptop that's actually pretty cheap, too.
I do need the CPU performance, that computer is used to compile C++ code. The RAM is for local LLMs - not fast enough to be practical most of the time tbh, but I like to experiment anyway.
The MacBook Pro with M4 Max will give you 16 cores (12 of which run at 4.5Ghz) and 128GB of RAM, and will likely pretty closely match the speed of the desktop processor for compiling C++ (at least we've done benchmarking of rustc in /r/rust the top-spec Apple chips somehow match top-spec x86 chips).
I've had mine about ten years and it's still on the original CPU and mobo and PSU I think. I've probably saved a few hundred bucks from not buying another whole computer. It might not be as fast as a new laptop but it has more RAM and storage than most.
If I want to go into LLM stuff I will buy a newish used GPU for it. If the CPU is a bottleneck then I'll get a new mobo but I won't need a new chassis or PSU maybe ever. And the hard drives just rotate as I buy bigger ones
- fake performance (good luck with your 105W "5090")
- OS confusion about active screen, keyboard and mouse (how many times have I experienced that only the built-in keyboard works during booting, or the OS showing the login screen on only the built-in screen),
- most of them have to be open or have ports in awkward places, and take up space comparable to a desktop.
Everyone has different needs. A lot of us get by very nicely with a good laptop and a big monitor (or two). Very few moving parts to keep track of, and you can be productive both home and away.
There is a photo in the Korea Herald article linked in op's article. https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10550038
OMG someone brought in a cubicle
And what looks like a keychron mechanical keyboard! (Loud AF)
What the hell .. that is crazy.
Reminds me a bit of when TPUG in Toronto used to set up entire Commodore PET rigs in coffee shops.
For reference, a Commodore PET weighs about 25 pounds, and is the size of a toilet bowl.
Double all that if you want to use a floppy disk.
Having used a Commdore PET, I cannot stop laughing at this size comparison.
It reminds of the observation that some people will go to great lengths to avoid the metric system.
That must be a tablet made to look like a desktop setup right?
Could be a monitor with a mini PC on the back.
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wonder if you can bring a tent inside and camp
I understand it's tongue-in-cheek, but you're actually describing a real problem Starbucks and other casual-style restaurants (McDonalds) have in Seattle. The downtown business districts are almost completely overrun by homelessness and many places in the area have stopped offering seating and only offer counter pick-up and standing tables/rails.
Homeless people do it all the time in certain cities. And because judges won't jail them for crimes police have stopped trying.
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Bizzare entitlement
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Imagine you can get up to the bathroom and nobody steals your monitor
The words "steal" and "bathroom" reminded me of a funny case when hand dryers started disappearing in bathrooms of several shopping malls in a large Russian city. In all cases, there was the same person with a large bag filmed nearby, but as there is no camera inside, it is difficult to understand if he did anything or not. Guess unsupervised tablet (aka "monitor") would not stay there for long.
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That's absolutly crazy
At this point I wonder why Starbucks hasn't diversified and started building actual coworking spaces in addition to coffee shops. They look like they should be in an ideal position for that.
They'd have to charge people for using those, which people won't be eager to. The point of coffee shops in this regard is that the use as free coworking space is "parasitic" on the space being financed by the café business.
they could integrate it with their loyalty points system, whatever it was called, starbucks card or sth
either pay with points, or get a cheaper rate for points, or even get points if you pay normal for the cowirking space
the card could also double as a validator, either for the reserved space or as a key card to a closed one, saving on in-store admin work
if i were starbucks, i would 100% try this
clearly there is a demand for quick and informal working space, instead of a formal, multi month tenant agreement with one limited provider
just go to any store location, and in case of need, pay an hourly rate with your coffee to get a seat
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The point of coffee shops in this regard is that the use as free coworking space
Incidentally, back when I was doing startups, there were free coworking spaces in the under-utilized portions of the Seattle convention center. Big, squishy chairs, fast wifi, and power ports galore.
It was like a self-service micro tech incubator, and helped me bootstrap a company that lasted over a decade. The State of Washington more than got its money back in taxes.
I wonder how often they try large floor plans. Most Starbucks I see try to keep things small. What happens if you make it a bit larger, like a small library? I wonder if the increase in foot traffic and sales would offset the cost of extra real estate. They could keep it free, but also somewhat cross over into coworking.
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(as long as the campers are considerate) it's also low cost. even prime location starbucks have large lull periods through the day, prime for campers, even though only spending $5-10.
when people feel entitled to take up 2 spaces for hours while families roam for seats is when it's too far
Idk. Anti-Cafés are popular some of them specialice in exactly that, being a coffee with coworking/studying atmosphere. It works for them
This one[1] has a meeting space that can be closed off from the rest of the store, with a TV or projector, and I’m pretty sure they’ve got a copier or at least an all-in-one printer.
[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/47RMhPAGNHXSnED9A
Our local Panera has this. It's popular with the MLM ladies.
Ive seen some coffee shops do this, where part of the space is a “coworking area”.
I imagine it requires a bit more capital investment and knowhow; I get the feeling that franchisees don’t have a lot of freedom.
Some Korean coffee shops should try this though!
Free, common-use things are awesome - until the tragedy of the commons sets in and ruins it for everybody. This is true of so many things that start free and then later require payment. And everybody gets mad about it.
Chicago has "residential zone parking" for the areas of the city that are primarily residential. For $30 per year per car, you get to park on the street in your local zone (2-3 city blocks). Nobody else is allowed to park on the street in that zone. For visitors, you can buy a sheet of stickers for $1 per sticker that enable 1 day of parking. But you can't buy more than 3 sheets in a month (they keep track).
I've always wondered why NYC and other big cities don't do this. It costs so little, yet makes it much easier to park where you live.
Density. If you paid for a parking permit then there's some expectation that a parking spot will be available for you near your house. Except in NYC residents outnumber parking spots 20:1 in some neighborhoods.
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30$ per year basically means it is subsidized. Imagine the revenue if they would rent out that space for anything else.
Maybe my view is too European, but why would you subsidize car ownership in a city?
Seattle has this. 2hr parking if you dont have an residential parking zone registration for your car (it's based on license plate).
Surprisingly they charge $190/yr per car for this.
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Residents love these policies but local businesses tend to hate them.
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Tragedy of the commons is caused by out of sync motives. Like a mismatch in protocols that people speak, which is partially explained by culture and upbringing (only partially of course). That is, tragedy of the commons is a symptom not a cause. Not something that happens just by virtue of something being a part of the commons. The more people you have, the more opportunity for those to be out of sync too
In the case of the coffee shop concept, I’d speculate since there’s not hundreds or thousands of years of history in Korea to establish a proper protocol for what is acceptable to do in a coffee shop, anything goes. Until Starbucks can establish from an early age that coffee drinking as the only culturally appropriate thing you should be doing in a coffee shop, and you may feel morally corrupt, be socially ostracized, or go to hell for your sins otherwise
> a proper protocol for what is acceptable to do in a coffee shop
i had thought that the accepted protocol for making a cafe a working space is to purchase at least one item on the menu per hour.
Except a space owned by corporation is not a commons. It’s not free and not controlled by the people who use it.
It is designed and completely controlled by a for profit corporation for the purpose of making profit.
Or maybe Starbucks should install a common printer with a fee?
The large items policy still makes sense, though
Is that a business they even want, someone occupying a seat for 8 hours only to consume two coffees?
They'd rather that than an empty seat, especially if that person is turning up 5-6 days/week.
Most coffee shops where I live (London, UK, specifically out in West London) are at best 20% full through most of the day, that's a lot of dead real estate not paying for itself.
When I tried working out of coffee shops a bit some years ago the "etiquette" seemed to be ~1 drink/hour to pay for your seat. I don't like coffee that much, so was consuming more like 0.66/hour (i.e. around 2 drinks every 3 hours), and people were fine with that, as it was effectively a rent payment of £20/day, or £100/week, which is a little under what a hotdesk would cost me in the same area but with a lot more flexibility (never pay for idle!), and of course its good margin sales for them.
Of course, they could just say "no laptops". There's a pub chain in the UK that did that (Sam Smith's - no screens, no swearing), but the rule is not widely followed or enforced and where it is the pubs are empty far more than the ones that welcome customers.
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I presume it's highly subjective.
For a busy cafe that's always short on seating and struggles to keep up with fulfilling orders, they want nothing to do with laptop squatters.
Every other case I imagine it's desirable to have at least some regulars presumably employed enough to be working from a cafe using modern tech.
One common problem I've noticed is van lifers and other quasi homeless folks spending ~zero money stinking up the place just for the free power and internet.
Now that battery life and cell-tethered internet is so good, some of my favorite urban cafes have adopted a no-outlets no-wifi approach, while still having tons of seating and allowing folks to be present with their computers all day. They just have to provide their own internet and power, which serves to exclude the true parasites while selecting for folks with $$ to spend because they have state of the art gadgets with their own unlimited data plans.
Customers attract customers. Even if some customers are not spending a lot of money, they bring in other customers who more than make up for them. This is the reason why so many coffee shops go out of their way to provide power outlets near every table.
They want people, but I think a printer crosses the line. It's a Starbucks not a Kinko's.
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When I worked out of free co-working spaces in Asia I would buy lunch and breakfast from them too, both to socialize with other patrons and to not lose my seat.
I work from a coffee shop a good bit. They don’t care for the most part. Assuming you tip reasonably, be nice to the staff, don’t be annoying, don’t negatively impact the other customers, be helpful when the occasion calls for it.
That will ruin them at $1,500 to $2,000 per litre of ink...
They could provide Starbucks branded ink of which 95% of the cost is licensing fees which they pay out tax-free to themselves.
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Maybe they could do some R&D to see if coffee could be used as ink.
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Then they'd have two problems: people camping out in the stores and managing thousands of printers.
It's hard to run a global business. Different people have such different ways of doing things. Every day, tens of millions of people run pen tests on Starbuck's rules. And Starbuck's front line of defence? A bunch of shy college student baristas.
Most of those people arent in college, especially outside the US.
Cafes provide two distinct products, usually bundled into one: seat rental and food/drink.
How about charge separately for each? I get that it would be awkward to try, but why not.
Or have actual public places? The Cafe's are there to serve coffee, it's just courtesy as business model to let you hang around in the premises and when the business model starts to fail in some way they adjust it.
After university, the most I miss is the actual places that are mine to use and are made for hanging around or working and not necessarily consuming anything.
> After university, the most I miss is the actual places that are mine to use and are made for hanging around or working and not necessarily consuming anything.
You just pre-paid for the consumption in your tuition fees.
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> The Cafe's are there to serve coffee, it's just courtesy as business model to let you hang around
Traditionally it's the other way around, the drink is a by-product of a public house where people can gather. Could you imagine a bar where people are just supposed to drink and leave?
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Local Library?
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Japanese Manga Cafes / Internet Cafes give you all you can drink coffee and tea for hourly pricing, and usually comes with a PC and a private booth. I'm not sure how much of a thing they still are though, but they were big in the 2000s and early 10s
This is what we had all over the world (...) when Internet Cafes were a thing. Perhaps they should come back?
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How interesting - so the other extreme. 0 cost on drinks, 100% time in seat cost.
Newer Coworking places generally seem to have some Starbucks-vibes, but AFAIK they are not doing to well.
Maybe the price of a coffee is exactly what people are willing to pay for a seat, a small table, and wifi for some hours.
I haven't seen a coworking place that isn't insanely overpriced compared to a coffee shop so it's no surprise they're not doing well.
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I tried wework. The seats were unbelievably uncomfortable. For the low-low price of $500 usd to get a hot seat, it's just much worse than coffeeshops.
Coworking spaces need to colocate with services. Starbucks, Fedex Kinkos, massage chairs....
Imagine if a little critical thinking like this had been allowed to enter the minds of WeWork investors.
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Last week's submission is a company created to do this, too: https://badgeapp.co.
If this is such a pervasive problem you'd think the article would have had no problem sourcing a photo of this instead of some generic phone ogling group?
I've been living in Seoul for a few months now and often work out of different Starbucks and have never seen anything like this here. I spent a similar amount of time in Seattle and saw much "worse" set ups at the coffee shops there.
I've been to Starbucks in Seoul 100+ times (not proud of it, more the opposite) and have never seen anything like this.
Reminds me of the Improv Everywhere sketch where they did this exact thing.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=EKEeHREK2nQ
I thought about Improv Everywhere recently - they had some great things in the early 2000s.
Re watching this, at about 1:16 one of the agents looks familiar. "Huh, she looks kinda like Aubrey Plaza". Then the credits come on: It was actually Aubrey Plaza.
I thought that too!
17 years ago - wow!
Are 3d printers allowed?
How about a soldering station?
Or a desktop scanning electron microscope?
Amusingly, those are all available at a cafe i’ve frequented in Seoul.
They’re used as background dressing but they’re also available to use. It’s criminally underused and i’d love to do it but i have no idea what i would make with it.
My friends got into tabletop wargaming last year, we print almost everything.
Also, great for organizers for drawers, tools, etc.
I have soldered in a Starbucks before.
All of those sound more reasonable than my Model M keyboard.
I have a water cooler … on wheels. Yes? No?
People bring printers to Starbucks… really ? I’m kind of surprised it feels like an abuse to me o_O it would never cross my mind
There needs to be a resurrection of the Canon NoteJet laptops.
Ooh, yes I want one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_NoteJet
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Yes, and not only in Korea.
https://laist.com/news/starbucks-swag
South Korea is cyber café country. If you open a café there, people expect some specific services.
I guess the fact people come with PCs and printer is a way to demonstrate how they don't want this part of US culture and would like to keep theirs. So either adapt and start offering PC bang in South Korea or go home.
Starbucks Coffee Korea Co. is a Korean company, owned by a Singaporean wealth fund and a Korean company. US Starbucks provides licensing and supplies, nothing more.
So this is a decision by a Korean company, not an American one.
https://stories.starbucks.com/asia/stories/2021/starbucks-tr...
Or you know, you could just not go there if you don't like the place rather than be a prick to people who work there and customers who like going there.
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Having lived in Korea, I have always enjoyed the cafe culture. Starbucks there is known for accepting you to work there. Although I haven't seen anyone bring a printer yet, some do bring extra stuff such as a stand for their laptop that take up a lot of space.
The only thing this article mentions is that Starbucks prohibits people of bringing stuff that would take up more than a single seat, which seems reasonable?
I used to travel with a Canon PIXMA printer. Quite portable. Could carry a laptop and printer in a small backpack. The paper was heavy, though.
What were you printing that required a print to be carried with you?
Personally printing should be banned. The amount of paper waste we create disgraceful.
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In 2014, in a Starbucks in Los Gatos, CA, I saw someone bring in a (small) desktop PC and a monitor and set it up at a table.
My roommate claims she saw the same in the Valley (in Sherman Oaks/VN in LA) in 2019
This joke was closer to real life in 1999: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FE_acveWUBMMJNU.jpg
I’ve seen that as well a few times.
In Tokyo, coffee shops seem to have embraced the work culture. Tables and seating have been adapted to working, and you often get a receipt with the time when you are expected to leave printed on it. Most (if not all) people in a Tully's in Tokyo are there to work.
Seoul is similar. Many Twosome Places have study desks and some of the chains known for small footprint also have bigger locations for meetings and work (Ediya Coffee Lab).
I never understood why people who are frugal would go to Starbucks in Korea to work, when local chains are beside them, have cheaper drinks and their desk/chair setups are less hostile to working.
Even McDonalds has seats with power outlets, I mostly see groups of students studying rather than people working.
A food court near my house has slowly turned into an improvised coworking space.
It's relatively quiet (as food courts go). For a while, the café even offered a whole day's worth of coffee for a reasonable price.
What I don't get is why the increasingly empty malls in my state don't incentivise this more. At the very least they'd earn something from parking and some food and drinks.
Absent owners of malls don't want to think or work with the community to earn money. They just want big anchor store contracts like it's the 90s.
The solution is to bring back cybercafes, or cafes which were set up up to go online. Such culture existed in the 90s but was then ended by the widespread online accessibility by home ADSL and later mobile internet.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/worlds-first-ever-cyber-cafe...
South Korea has many pc cafes, so called pc bangs / pc방, and there are also many study cafes where you can work for long periods.
The 'problem' with those for remote workers is that you pay per minute/hour in a cybercafe - in a normal coffee shop you can just nurse one coffee for hours and pay a single low cost (and get a coffee).
I can't remember the name of it now but back in 2010s there was an 'OK' managed drop-in office space you could rent for £10 a day in central London - which came with free coffee and printing - I haven't looked at the prices lately.
Wow, I'd be curious about the details if you can remember.
I was working from cafes in London at that time, and I would have loved to find a place like that. I had to either use actual cafes (free besides getting a coffee and maybe a sandwich, limited privacy and security) or pay for a dedicated space, generally with too much tedious bureaucracy. Maybe I misremember, but to get prices as low as £10/day I think you had to commit to a large number of days per month. I don't recall anyone offering low prices a la carte.
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Cybercafes are already a big thing in SK, but why is the above comment downvoted? I, for one, miss net cafes very much. They used to be big in Greece, and I made many many dear friendships in small, cozy net cafes.
I can recount hilarious and even heartwarming stories; turns out that having a cafe (i.e. leisure space) with computers used by people in close proximity makes for dynamics and interactions that you cannot recreate with remote connections.
I am more than happy to "take my coffee and fuck off". But I'll do it with a 50 cent instant coffee from a supermarket, not pay 10$ for it just to not be able to relax in a coffee shop.
In my town, this one guy, set up his whole kit. 25” monitor, gaming setup. Disk drives. And then he could be there for 13 hrs a day. A little extreme!
I saw a guy (in america) charge his e-bike battery once at Starbucks. GPT estimates a full recharge to be around 30 cents.
Hah, probably comparable to running a desktop for an equivalent amount of time - most ebike chargers are 100 - 200 W, and the bikes usually have a battery between 0.5 - 1 kWh (which in my area would be 5 - 10 cents). Less disruptive though, assuming they detached the battery and left the bike outside.
Dude it's middle school math. Average pedal assist e-bike battery, estimate at 500 watt-hours. Electricity prices at my home are about 20 cents per kilowatt-hour.
(0.5 kwhr) * (20 cents/kwhr) = 10 cents. With an additional 10-15% due to charging system inefficiencies (lost to heat). 11 cents.
It can be good exercise to do an 8th grade level word problem every now and then.
The actual arithmetic is easy but most people don’t know about the batteries in e-bikes. They might not know about the electricity prices at the top of their heads either.
You could google those…but it seems easier to just use GPT if you’re going to google that stuff anyway.
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Printers?! Desktop?! They need to wheel the stuff in. Hilarious how far people go to save a few bucks.
I saw someone with a portable monitor and Mac mini in our local Toronto Second Cup location.
I feel genuinely sad for anyone who's in such a desperate spot that they're doing this
What makes you think they’re desperate? IME people from Asian cultures sometimes have ways of thinking that strike at least me personally as basically alien. And then my brain interpolates their motives wrong based on biases that are shaped by western versions of politeness etc.
The apartment is small; the missus wants you out of it so that she can clean it; you have a deadline; there's a café nearby; bingo.
Who the eff lugs their desktop machine and printer to Starbucks instead of just use it in their house if that's a workable option? You'd have to be sorely motivated by something. Asians are in fact human dude.
> Starbucks South Korea implemented a policy asking patrons to not bring bulky items like desktop computers and printers into stores.
.. says the caption under a Getty image which shows no such thing! No wonder people don't respect the media.
The only reason I would click on this sort of thing would be to see a video or image of Koreans bringing their desktops and printers to a Starbucks and setting them up.
Without that, I can imagine it just fine without relying on any words in the article.
Searching YouTube, I'm not able to find any videos footage of people with desktops that they brought to a Starbucks in South Korea. The story is circulating and there are various new stories in various languages from various news networks, but all have only generic footage unrelated to the story.
I found this 17-year-old prank video (not Koreans): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKEeHREK2nQ
One 7-year-old video (likewise): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBRkRZzCeTo
Ho-hum content. They brought a computer, set it up and sat down.
I'm guessing this Korea thing was probably a very small number of people in specific locations (possibly pranksters) and not a national trend.
aww shucks, there goes my plan to pack my Threadripper into a 90s vintage Dolch "portable computer" housing and let Starbucks pay the power bills.
If there's no cost, people will take advantage of it.
In Japan I’ve seen at Starbucks: a guy bring in a giant power supply and plop it down on top of the table to power his tower and monitor like it wasn’t the most sociopathic thing in the world. And another guy used to set up six or seven screens at his table to “daytrade” — turns out he wasn’t day trading at all, they were all running videos of fake daytrading / stock tickers. (I had a friend at that Starbucks who would give me all the details; they had to ban him eventually for disrupting / getting surly with other customers).
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They did build something people want, why are they rejecting it now?
Making something people want isn't enough, unless they want to start paying their employees and leases with smiles.
People shouldn't have to bring a desktop computer, they should already have one there.
Seems like an opportunity for a coworking-lite space -- rent a seat/desk spot for 1 hour blocks.
There's already a large offering of such spaces in Korea. You have cafes where you can bring your laptop and work in peace, there's pc cafes / pc bangs which are more for gaming but provide a desktop, there are places where you can rent co-working spaces or spaces for co-working that you can use with a membership.
Co-working spaces of all types are ubiquitous in Tokyo FWIW. Near my midsize station I had about 10 different providers in a 10 minute walking radius, some with multiple locations even!
Most have a selection of plans to choose from: hourly, daily, monthly, etc
I chose a bit more upscale one without a fixed seat. I pay ¥1100 (7.5 USD) I think for each day I use it, with a monthly minimum spend of ¥2200. It comes with free mediocre coffee/tea. It is consistently clean and library quiet as people follow the posted rules including minding the volume of their typing and headphones.
I would be surprised if the situation in Seoul was significantly different.
They actually have exactly that for gaming: a "pc bang" like a internet cafe. I wonder if it has been tried in earnest for co-working. You would think it is an easier business so long as the demand is there.
There's also study cafes, which are aimed more primarily at students but often have working spaces for laptop use. These are quiet spaces to focus compared to something like Starbucks or PC bangs though.
What a novel concept!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_bang
I first assumed this was a YouTube video where someone eats a PC in front of their livestream audience.
I somehow doubt that people are lugging a desktop and printer around the city, only to set it up and work for 1 hour in Starbucks.
By the hour, implying multiple are possible.
With starbucks delivery, starbucks printing, etc.
Isn’t that how most coworking spaces work already? I’ve worked from a lot of them, and it always worked like that: I check in when I arrive in the morning, and when I check out at the end of the day, I pay for the number of hours I have spent there (often capped to a maximum of 5 hours or so, even if I stay longer).
My original comment was an offhand observation, but the difference under assumption is that co-working spaces require a contract/commitment, whereas the scenario I had in mind was no commitment other than paying for each time of use.
Maybe that's already a thing; my sense of self is not dependent upon being "right" in this matter.
Why would anyone except a gamer buy a desktop computer anyway. I guess some people still have their old computer and a lot of south korenas are gamers, but laptops are just better overall because of the portability. If people bring printerS pural then starbuck could "just" have a free-ish printer
> Why would anyone except a gamer buy a desktop computer anyway?
Because you get a beast of a machine for the price of MacBook Air, and because you prefer looking at a big ultrawide monitor instead of alt-tabbing like crazy on a 13" screen, and you prefer a full keyboard and a proper mouse to the cramped layout they stuff in laptops because there's no room.
Oh, and maybe a proper sound system.
And it can also double as a NAS (more physical space for storage) and home server.
Not everyone needs portability all the time. For when I do, I have a Thinkpad I can get by with, with Tailscale VPN so it has access to the workstation.
(for anyone curios, yes, it's still cheaper than top-of-the-line laptop + nas/home server combo, but my main reason is ergonomics).
External monitor, keyboard, mouse, sound, stuck in closet and used as a NAS... I do all these with laptops just as much as with desktops.
Laptop price disadvantage can even flip when buying used due to cheaper shipping.
Laptops can't hold as many internal devices nor the fastest parts and have worse thermals/sound though.
> it can also double as a NAS ... and home server
Devil's advocate, but it can't if it's in Starbucks ;)
There's far cheaper workstations out there than Macbooks, especially if you're running Linux on them.
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Anyone who doesn't need to work while traveling actually.
A desktop is both cheaper (at the same spec), while being much more durable due to being upgradable and reparable.
Sure laptop win in terms of portability, but since we can do so much on our phone, I don't really feel the need to bring a computer with me everywhere.
Show me that quiet, 16 core, 5 GHz, 128 GB RAM laptop that's actually pretty cheap, too.
I do need the CPU performance, that computer is used to compile C++ code. The RAM is for local LLMs - not fast enough to be practical most of the time tbh, but I like to experiment anyway.
The MacBook Pro with M4 Max will give you 16 cores (12 of which run at 4.5Ghz) and 128GB of RAM, and will likely pretty closely match the speed of the desktop processor for compiling C++ (at least we've done benchmarking of rustc in /r/rust the top-spec Apple chips somehow match top-spec x86 chips).
It certainly won't be cheap though!
Keep that beast humming at home and get a cheap MacBook Air to use ssh at the coffee shop.
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An AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 should do that.
They used to be cheaper. Might still be?
I've had mine about ten years and it's still on the original CPU and mobo and PSU I think. I've probably saved a few hundred bucks from not buying another whole computer. It might not be as fast as a new laptop but it has more RAM and storage than most.
If I want to go into LLM stuff I will buy a newish used GPU for it. If the CPU is a bottleneck then I'll get a new mobo but I won't need a new chassis or PSU maybe ever. And the hard drives just rotate as I buy bigger ones
If you don’t need the portability, desktops are strictly better.
Laptops are terrible -
- Too small
- too loud
- too hot
- too few ports
- fake performance (good luck with your 105W "5090")
- OS confusion about active screen, keyboard and mouse (how many times have I experienced that only the built-in keyboard works during booting, or the OS showing the login screen on only the built-in screen),
- most of them have to be open or have ports in awkward places, and take up space comparable to a desktop.
Everyone has different needs. A lot of us get by very nicely with a good laptop and a big monitor (or two). Very few moving parts to keep track of, and you can be productive both home and away.