Walk into any café with plentiful charging outlets, seating, and good Wi-Fi, and you’re bound to see slews of laptop workers.
That’s the case at New York coffee shop Devoción, with its high ceilings, natural light, exposed brick, and abundant plants. The local chain, which now has cafés in Brooklyn and Manhattan, has attracted creatives and freelancers since opening its first location in Williamsburg in 2014, owner Steve Sutton says.
During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, hoards of workers went remote, with work-from-home rates increasing by five times from 2019 through 2023, according to a study from Stanford’s Institute for Economic Policy Research. Now, many companies are back in the office on a hybrid basis, and some 40% of U.S. workers are remote at least one day a week, the study finds.
But everyone isn’t working from home or the office. Workers’ in-office preferences are shifting, with more employees looking for more “third places” to get work done. In ranking eight “workplace experiences,” U.S. employees ranked the coffee shop experience as the most desirable—above those that resemble a clubhouse, library, conference center, and more, according to real estate firm Gensler’s co-CEOs Diane Hoskins and Andy Cohen in their book, Design for a Radically Changing World.
It’s part of a larger trend. The Gensler Research Institute’s data from 2019 shows employees found their workplaces more and more ineffective, despite increases in choice and mobility that were already occurring pre-pandemic, Hoskins and Cohen write. And now, Gensler’s 2023 data shows “these declines persisted, particularly in terms of workers’ ability to focus and collaborate with others virtually” as a result of increasingly crowded but open-layout offices and a lack of privacy.
But what does that mean for café owners dealing with an influx of lingering laptop users? It’s about trying to strike a balance between welcoming workers while still promoting turnover in order to make a profit.
To solve this challenge, Sutton says he set a Wi-Fi time limit a year ago. Each customer gets a receipt with a Wi-Fi password that’s valid for four hours on weekdays. Sutton says he wanted to start experimenting with Wi-Fi time limits back in 2016, but he couldn’t find any suitable tool for doing so.
He now uses GoGoGuest, a platform offering a range of marketing and operations tools for restaurants. By integrating with Devoción’s POS system, the platform requires a purchase before guests can connect, and after the time is up, customers can make another purchase and get a code for another four hours.
GoGoGuest has capabilities to integrate with a range of POS systems like Toast, Square, and Clover, and since the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has seen a huge increase in clients looking to use its Wi-Fi captive-portal product; In 2019, about 500 coffee shops used the service, and now, it’s used in more than 1,000 locations around the country, cofounder and CEO Jessica Valenzuela says. The service is most popular in big cities, such as New York and San Francisco, and in cities with large universities like Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Austin.
Sutton’s first attempt at laptop restrictions was back in 2015, when he implemented a no-Wi-Fi-on-weekends policy after customers complained about all the computers. “People would come from Long Island or Jersey . . . to check us out. And they would get infuriated because they came with their families and they couldn’t find a seat,” he says. Even local customers who worked from Devoción during the week complained about not having a spot to sit with their friends and families come Saturday and Sunday, Sutton says. (The café still employs this weekend policy, in addition to the four-hour passwords on weekdays.)
“We’re trying to find the middle ground,” Sutton says, adding that they haven’t noticed any big difference in their finances since instituting the limit. It’s more an effort to make both kinds of customers happy. “We do believe that coffee shops are community builders, so we want to be mindful on both sides of the spectrum.”
Remote workers consider a range of amenities when deciding where to camp out with their laptop. Lists of remote-work cafés often rank factors like availability of power outlets, vacancy, Wi-Fi speed, background noise, and bathroom availability. Some note Wi-Fi limits, too, providing lower rankings for those with more restrictive policies.
Sutton says that one of the challenges of having such policies often comes down to the way it’s communicated. “We do have signs that say no Wi-Fi on weekends, and I believe we posted [it] on Google. But it’s hospitality so we want our staff to be vocal about it,” Sutton says. “Most of the time when you are able to explain to somebody why we do it . . . most people understand.”
Valenzuela echoed his point. “In the beginning of the onboarding, [customers] would be a little hesitant about it, but then they don’t have a choice. They love the coffee shop; they love their beverages; they love the space. It’s better than to stay in your apartment all day working, so they still come, and then they eventually embrace the policy and understand why it needs to be in place,” she says, adding that customers are especially sympathetic to the small businesses she works with, which are typically independent or small chains.
And among GoGoGuest’s New York coffee shop clients, the average purchase from a guest that uses Wi-Fi is $70.16 per month—compared to just $15.41 per month, suggesting the laptop users are often loyal, repeat customers.
It remains a tough balance, though, with an abundance of laptop users changing the energy of once-buzzy cafés. “There’s no right or wrong,” Sutton says. “I can tell you that the space feels better when there’s conversation, when there is reading, when there’s less typing. When it’s just a laptop heaven, the space tends to be a little bit colder in energy. We try to take a very balanced position and understand both sides.”
