Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Web, with a side o’ joe

Coffee shops struggle with charging for access

wifi1

Steve Marcus

UNLV doctoral student Andy Harper is among the legions who use Internet service provided at no cost by many coffee shops. At the It’s a Grind store pictured, Harper says, he was told after he had been going there for weeks that he could be charged merely for taking his laptop out of its bag.

Click to enlarge photo

A sign advertises free Wi-Fi, or wireless fidelity, Internet service at the It’s a Grind franchise at 8470 W. Desert Inn Road in Las Vegas.

The coffee shop as social hub isn’t new. In Las Vegas there still are places for locals in morning sweat pants to gather to chitchat about the latest news, child care regimens and the like with others who look just as meticulously carefree.

But the coffee shops of today, although the change has been slow, are places older generations might not recognize.

The convenience of laptop computers and the availability of cheap wireless Internet connections have changed the coffeehouse. It is unlikely to ever change back to the days when shops were known for the quality of their beans, not the breadth of their broadband.

“People carry around their laptops; they want to be constantly connected,” says Monique Gonzales, 27, in charge of community relations for Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf franchises in Las Vegas. “It’s 2008. How can you not accommodate your customers with Wi-Fi?”

“Wi-Fi” is shorthand for wireless fidelity. Wi-Fi devices convert hard-line Internet connections into signals that can be picked up by properly equipped laptops and other electronic devices.

But here’s the counterquestion, and one that megacoffee-slinger Starbucks seems to have a handle on:

If so much business is being done in the local coffee shop, if the stores are increasingly becoming hubs of communication and socializing in our strip-mall-lined world, don’t these stores have the right to demand that customers buy something to use that Internet, those tables and chairs? Are policies changing to require payment for free wireless connections?

That question never dawned on Andy Harper until he was told never to return to an It’s A Grind franchise in Las Vegas because he hadn’t purchased enough coffee.

Harper, 37, a sociology dissertation away from getting his doctorate at UNLV, is a standard fixture at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf across Maryland Parkway from UNLV. Only recently had he found the It’s A Grind on Desert Inn Road and Durango Drive. Although the store did a lot of drive-through business, he liked it because the inside was quiet enough to get lots of work done.

He had been going there for a few weeks, Harper said, when the owner told him he had the right to charge Harper $4 “just to take my laptop out of the bag.” Harper was stunned. On a daily basis, he would spend $3 or more for a drink, leave a tip, and if he stayed more than a few hours, he always got more coffee.

“I was a little bit alarmed,” Harper said.

He called the franchise’s corporate office in California. (Spokesmen from the office did not return a call from the Las Vegas Sun. The owner of the It’s A Grind also did not return a call for comment.) The corporate people commiserated, told him the company policy was to offer free Internet access and sent him a $10 gift certificate.

“What’s funny is, I had actually recommended this place to a lot of other people,” Harper said. “Now I’m going to tell them to stay away.

“I would have spent hundreds of dollars on coffee at this place in a year’s time. Now I’m taking it somewhere else. I’m a student and poor, and I’ll go where the Internet is free.”

The point of which always brings Harper back to the same question: How can any business that offers free wireless Internet not offer it for free?

Starbucks is keenly aware of the ubiquity of the Internet and Wi-Fi’s importance to its business. In February, the company announced it would be teaming with AT&T to provide cheaper wireless service at roughly 7,000 Starbucks in the United States, including more than 100 in the Las Vegas Valley. Its current service with T-Mobile costs customers about $30 a month for a year or $40 if paid month to month.

Under its new deal with AT&T, patrons with Starbucks Cards will get up to two free hours per day. Qualifying AT&T customers also will get free access. Others can pay $3.99 for a two-hour session, and monthly membership will cost $19.99.

To those used to free Wi-Fi, maybe that doesn’t seem fair.

But just look around. It’s 9:15 a.m. Wednesday at the Starbucks on Paradise Road, just north of Flamingo. Seven people are sitting at tables, five of them gazing into laptop screens like barflies at tabletop video poker machines.

A day earlier, at the Coffee Bean across the street from UNLV, insurance salesman Fred Craddolph, 46, was doing business with Oscar Giurcovich. A portable printer attached to Craddolph’s laptop printed the insurance deal they had just hammered out.

“I got to go where my customers are,” Craddolph said, surrounded by a dozen or more people also on their laptops. More than a few were playing poker online. Another played Scrabble.

All over Las Vegas, wireless waves are beaming information to laptops at coffeehouses, where money is being made and lost.

Thursday morning, at a Starbucks at Rancho Drive and Charleston Boulevard, environmental consultant Erik Lundgaard, 33, and his employee Larry Carter occupied a table, their laptops wirelessly linked into the company server.

“It’s an office, really,” Lundgaard says. A 3-inch rectangular piece of plastic juts from his ear to let him take calls while using his hands to type on a keyboard. Almost every day, Lundgaard said, he meets other businesspeople at one of the Starbucks in the valley.

All of which leads back to that question: Should coffee joints charge for use?

Even the question makes Gonzales laugh.

“Who would even charge for wireless access, when you can get it so many other places these days?” she said. “How can you not provide this to people who are paying up to $5 for a beverage?”

It’s difficult to imagine going into any coffee joint — or the countless other businesses in Las Vegas such as Panera Bread, the Freakin’ Frog, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Main Street Station, some McDonald’s franchises, reJavaNate Coffee Lounge — and simply surf the Web without ordering something.

At the Starbucks on Paradise and Flamingo, lobbyist Josh Griffin is sitting with MGM Mirage’s government affairs expert, Rob Elliot. Griffin carries his laptop all over Las Vegas because he knows the coffee shop is the best spot for him to do business.

“Offices tend to put you in this ‘across the table’ kind of thing,” Griffin said. “The atmosphere of a coffee shop makes the conversation flow a lot better.”

So, why not have these meetings in a bar?

“Who says I don’t?” Griffin said, laughing. “But come 5 o’clock, I have a family and kids and stuff to do. I get stressed sitting at a bar because I’m constantly looking at my watch, knowing I have to get going.”

As the two talk strategy about some upcoming legislative issue, men in ties and women in power suits do the Wi-Fi walk.

They walk in, push aside chairs and look under tables, then move to the next table until they find a seat close enough to an outlet for them to plug in their laptops.

And the coffee? They’ll get around to that next.

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