Free WiFi and coffee
More and more you see free WiFi coming to coffee corners and coffee shops. Starbucks for example is giving away wifi and some countries a stop at your local hamburger place is also a good place to do some work. However, as all is about money the question is if it returning anything to the company providing it.
I do not have any numbers available so I can only speak from my own experience and that of fellow laptop nomads. And yes, you do tend to spend more in a place where free WiFi is available. When you have a stop for coffee and have the option to open your laptop for a short while and do some work you can end up in the situation that you order a extra coffee because you want to finish your work.
As I do work from home from time to time I do also have the urge from time to time to see some people. Now it is simply a matter of closing my laptop take it with me and walk to a near coffee place and start working again. Also at this moment I do write this piece from my favorite coffee location.
As we all have VPN connections and WiFi is becoming available one more and more places people tend to work in different places and on other times than before. A new way of working wherever you like and whenever you like. My employee is not really interested in where I do my job. I have a laptop, mobile phone and VPN access to the corporate network and the networks of most of my customers so I have this ability. Also the when is becoming more and more a matter of your own choice.
Some of the customers I work and worked for do not really care if I write my code during office hours at a desk in the office. They do care about the quality of the code and the deadline that is set or it.
some people do ask the question if this is a good trend because the line between work and private time is becoming more and more vague. I do personally believe that the work life balance is something that can be managed perfectly when you have the option to decide for yourself where and when you like to do your job. And personally, and a lot of other people do love to work in a coffee shop on a sunday. So yes for a coffee shop providing free WiFi is a good thing because suddenly a complete workforce is able to do the job at their location and order coffee.
So I think that if you ever want to open a coffee shop or something like that one of the first things you have to setup is a very fast internet gateway to provide your customers with a uplink.