The Wired Café
Serving the Digital Community
by Allen Kinast
Photographs by Kenneth R. Olson

Sitting on a sofa inside Tiny's coffeehouse in Portland, Ore., Bryan Markovitz is hard at work. Or maybe he's instant-messaging with a friend. Then again, he could be shopping online, drumming up new business, making travel plans, or brainstorming with colleagues on a new performance piece. Come to think of it, he might actually be sitting in a coffee shop in Brooklyn.
   Welcome to Markovitz's Wi-Fi world, a Matrix-like space where your state of mind counts as much, maybe more, than the city or state you actually find yourself in. As both the communications director for a Portland-based public relations firm and the artistic director for a local performance group, Markovitz has used readily available technology to stay connected to the Internet wherever he goes, whenever he pleases. In this new reality, work, home and leisure tend to blur into interchangeable concepts. On average, Markovitz says he spends eight to 10 hours a day with his laptop computer. "Technology lets me feel like I have a base, but it creates that space anywhere I am." Take that, Neo. While many people might view his techno-kinetic lifestyle as chaotic at best, Markovitz feels the real insanity would come were he to work in a more traditional, desk-bound manner. "I like to set up my life to be as open-ended and creative as possible," Markovitz says. With his laptop serving as a trusty compass, Markovitz can orient himself quickly to a vast community of like-minded creative souls and high-tech voyagers. Yet as effortless as his virtual wanderings are, Markovitz's mind and body are still very much attached, and wherever he sits himself down, there's usually a latte or a sandwich close at hand.
   Markovitz is one of a growing number of individuals who have cut the cord and gone wireless. Preferring to work, communicate and play on the fly, these folks are flocking to coffee shops, hotel lounges, restaurants, and other places that have been set up as wireless access points, or Wi-Fi hotspots.
   Nationwide, while the wireless phenomenon might still have the look and feel of a trend for the moment, the numbers on it point toward something far more ubiquitous in the very near future. According to a recent study by the Cahner's Group, shipments of wireless-enabled laptop computers are expected to grow to more than 15 million units in 2005, compared with the 2.9 million sold in 2001. While there were 2 million regular wireless users in the United States in 2002, their numbers are predicted to grow to more than 20 million by 2006.
   For specialty coffee retailers looking for dependable customers, this wireless crowd-with its ample pocket change and its desire for comfortable places to eat, drink and relax-would seem an almost heaven-sent demographic. Yet it remains uncertain whether people like Markovitz will stick around long enough to make the effort of providing Internet service worthwhile.
   Many Americans get their first exposure to the Internet café concept overseas. Five years ago, when my wife and I traveled through Southeast Asia on a backpacking honeymoon, Internet cafés proved to be an integral part of our travels. They were a refuge, a place where we could deaden the occasional pangs of homesickness that all travelers suffer. We'd duck into Internet cafés in the heat of the afternoon, order some local coffee concoction or fruity drink, then sit back and compose wondrous e-mails of our carefree adventures to friends and family back home. At times, we'd get so wrapped up in telling our tales that we'd forget to actually go out and have more adventures. Yet, all the while, the ever-pleasant café staff would cheerfully keep the drinks and snacks coming.
   Having visited many of these same villages a half-decade earlier after a stint with the Peace Corps, I was struck by how quickly Internet cafés had mushroomed into a full-blown cottage industry. While linking the Internet to café culture was probably more a matter of semantics at first, their union was the start of an odd, yet mutually beneficial relationship. Café culture has always been about lounging, about stepping back from the hustle and bustle with a cup in hand, about detouring from life's madness for a friendly chit chat. E-mail merely added the possibility that your companion might be sitting on the other side of the world rather than across from you in the same café.
   The Internet café concept also has fared relatively well on home turf. Eight years ago, Paul Bogdanovich took his interest in computers and a desire to own his own coffeehouse and started up Internet Café in Red Bank, N.J. Use of his Internet service, which presently includes eight computers, plug-in ethernet connections and wireless access, costs $5 for the first half-hour, then $2 for every 15 minutes thereafter. As wired as Bogdanovich's operation is, he estimates that the Internet usage accounts for only 20 percent of his revenue stream, with the bulk of his income coming from coffee, desserts, and live music and entertainment in the evenings.
   The cost of his Internet service isn't cheap, either. Bogdanovich currently pays about $800 per month, though he's quick to add that most coffeehouses can easily provide good Internet service for under $100 a month. "We have a T-1 line, and we do a lot of Web site development and hosting, which all drives the costs up," he says. Internet service, for Bogdanovich at least, seems to be an outgrowth of a more personal interest in computing that, for the time being, is still profitable.
   A love for coffee may have inspired James Dayson and his family to purchase a coffee and tea shop in the heart of Portland's popular Irvington neighborhood, but they knew early on that the Internet would need to be a crucial part of the business mix. While Dayson felt he could offer good coffee and tea, and he knew the shop had quirky independent charm, its location-only a few blocks away from one of the most competitive coffee corners in the city-would require a creative means of survival. "There's only so many customers who will come to you, because you're not one of the big guys," Dayson says. He and his co-owners quickly renamed the shop Cyberccino, brought in a static DSL line with a bandwidth running around 900MB, and installed the equipment needed to turn the store into a Wi-Fi hotspot.
   Though Cyberccino charges $2.25 an hour for use of their computers, Dayson says he waives the charge when customers buy a drink of equal value, and Wi-Fi access is free. "At this point, the computers aren't here to pay for themselves, they're to draw people in," Dayson says. When I ask Dayson if the Internet draws a specific crowd, he assures me that his Internet users are an eclectic bunch. "We get everyone from students to 90-year-old retirees." He scans the room, notes the present customers, then adds, "There's a retiree who comes in and plays chess almost daily. Over there is a guy reviewing his fantasy football standings, and that woman looks like she's doing some work. Those people are using chat rooms."
  So if the Internet isn't a big moneymaker, why feature it? Dayson and his co-owners believe that the competition just beyond Cyberccino's doors demands more diversification on their part. In addition to adding soups, salads and sandwiches to create a more full-fledged café menu, he plans to convert a room currently devoted to coffee and tea merchandise into a high-tech gaming area. (Think pong, not poker.) The new room, which is tentatively called "the pit," will feature, according to Dayson, "really hefty machines" that will go for a flat rate of $5 per hour whether you buy a coffee or not.
   An avid gamer himself, Dayson is confident that his setup will attract like-minded customers, but he cautions other coffeehouse owners from pursuing the gaming route unless they have both the passion for it and the high-tech know-how. "Someone who's not tech-savvy will just end up spending their money on a network administrator." An even bigger reason to avoid the gaming route may be that gamers, according to Dayson, "aren't usually into coffee." As a result, a cooler stocked with sodas and energy drinks is in the works, though Dayson quickly offers the possibility that gamers, given the proper education, "could really get into espresso shots."
   While it's understandable that people like Bogdanovich and Dayson would want to leverage their computer interests and expertise in the pursuit of new customers, what about the rest of us less-technologically inclined? Jen Procter, who manages Tiny's in Portland, admits she may not understand the intricacies of her coffeehouse's free Wi-Fi hotspot, but she's content seeing the positive effect it's having on business. "At first, it started off as two or three customers who used wireless," says Procter. "Then, all of a sudden-boom!-we had ten people who were regularly coming in and using it, and an additional fifteen on a more periodic basis." Luckily the up-tick in wireless customers coincided with an expansion into a second room, and a not-so-tiny Tiny's is, for the moment, happily growing with its customers.
   A few miles away, Mack Drain, business manager of Portland's Urban Grind Coffee, is seeing a similar surge in the use of that café's free Wi-Fi hotspot. "We easily have 15 logins a day now," Drain says. He notes that his wireless customers do plenty of old-fashioned, face-to-face networking in addition to their Internet networking. "These are basically people who want to get out of their homes and offices and find a new community around them," Drain says.
   Wireless customers acknowledge the role of community in the places they frequent. "I don't feel obligated to go to the nearest coffee shop," Markovitz says. For as convenience-oriented as his lifestyle might seem to be, Markovitz says he'll often walk a few extra blocks to find the "coffee shop that can cater to a culture rather than a latte." While he says it's important for a coffeehouse to "feel comfortable," it also needs to be a place where "other people that I'm interested in-artists, musicians, poets-are converging."
   Another factor that seems to be driving many wireless aficionados to small independent coffeehouses is price, especially the lack of it when it comes to a location's Wi-Fi access. According to Personal Telco Project, a Portland-based volunteer group that promotes the adoption of free Wi-Fi access by local businesses, the City of Roses was recently named "one of the most un-wired cities" by an Intel Wi-Fi survey. According to Urban Grind's Mack Drain, the city currently has more than "900 free hotspots," and the number is growing almost daily. While Portland might be slightly ahead of the curve in the number of free hotspots around town, similar enthusiasm and growth in free Wi-Fi hotspots is occuring in all major metropolitan areas.
   One reason free Wi-Fi hotspots are popping up all over is they are fairly cheap to install and relatively easy to set up. At its most basic, a Wi-Fi hotspot requires a broadband connection (DSL or cable are fine), a transceiver device called a router that broadcasts your broadband connection to your customers' laptops or personal digital assistants, and a relatively new computer to manage your hotspot.
   If you already have a newer generation computer, the Wi-Fi hardware may cost you as little as $150, but locations that need to update their business computer might need to figure on $1,000 in up-front costs. Monthly broadband connection will run anywhere from $50­$150. If this sounds at all interesting, I highly recommend a visit to www.wififreenet.com. The Web site is well-written and has all the information that a business will need to provide free Wi-Fi access to its customers.
   Regardless of how easy and cost-effective it might be to provide wireless Internet service, some coffeehouse owners will insist that coffee is their only business and that providing Internet service would be nothing more than a distraction. If you find yourself a bit of a Luddite in this regard, here's a number to consider: 2300. That's the number of Starbucks locations that now feature in-store wireless Internet service in conjunction with wireless provider T-Mobile. Regardless of one's feelings about the "big green machine," the company's promotion of wireless will most likely solidify consumers' perception of the service as a necessity for a coffeehouse in a few years' time.
   The fact that Starbucks and T-Mobile are charging for their wireless service, however, may actually represent the best opportunity the rest of the specialty coffee industry has had to chip away at the coffee giant's hold on its upscale customer base.
   Steve Schnitzler of Port City Java in Wilmington, N.C., says that Starbucks' decision to charge its customers "frankly caught me a little by surprise." As director of operations for Port City Java, Schnitzler acknowledes the success of Starbucks has had with its upscale amenities and professional service. However, Schnitzler says he and his team have worked hard to create a coffee experience that, he hopes, goes beyond that model by providing customers with better quality coffee and a place "where they're encouraged to linger."
   Yet when Schnitzler and company considered Internet service as a possible revenue stream for their 27 stores located mostly in the southeastern corner of the United States, they decided it made better business sense to offer it as a free amenity. "I just assumed that they [Starbucks] would have come to the same conclusion," Schnitzler says. As a person who lives out of his laptop himself, Schnitzler says he "couldn't imagine having to pay for a service that's free right around the corner."
   In its desire to make the Internet an amenity for every customer, Port City Java offers both wired and wireless options. "Each location features hookups throughout the store running on DSL or cable modems as well as Wi-Fi access," says Schnitzler, who estimates that each location "could have upwards of 70 people using the Internet at any one time." For a franchise-oriented company like Port City Java that's moving into new locations, the cost of running additional plug-ins is marginal, and the physical connection lines ensure that even customers with slightly less cutting-edge computers have a way to get online.
   All things considered,, for the independent coffeehouse owner who's in an established location, wireless is probably the better bet. Wi-Fi-enabling technology such as Intel's Centrino and Apple's Airport are going into the current generation of laptop PCs and Macs, so it's not like wireless is some tekkie-geek pipe dream. Given the option of messing with cords to plug into a terminal or the stroke of a few keys to wirelessly propel themselves onto the Internet, folks like Markovitz and Schnitzler would choose the easier option.
   The technology needed to start up a wireless network isn't terribly complicated, but creating a wireless network on your own does require a fair amount of computer literacy. "While [a wireless network] really isn't that hard to set up," Schnitzler says, "the amenity that doesn't work isn't an amenity." The wireless customer who walks into your place anticipating Wi-Fi but has a hard time getting online will quickly migrate elsewhere. Given this reality, Schnitzler says that it pays to have a good relationship with your ISP (Internet Service Provider), and that it doesn't hurt to have a friend who knows computers.
   As attractive as a wireless network looks from a business standpoint, it also carries with it some potentially serious security issues. John Green is president of Portland-based Nova Business Systems Inc., a firm that specializes in network security services to small- and medium-sized businesses. Having worked as a computer security specialist for more than 20 years, Green believes that most business owners are only dimly aware of how vulnerable their wireless networks are to a virtual Pandora's box of mischief. He has seen it all, from professional cybercrooks who run sophisticated extortion schemes from halfway around the globe to your friendly neighborhood hacker who can destroy a company's records while quietly sipping an americano.
   "If small business owners don't properly configure their wireless networks," Green says, "they are not only putting their own computing resources at risk, but they also expose themselves to potential liability with their customers." Firewalls (computer programs specifically designed to protect a business's computer information from both external and internal threats) come in many shapes and sizes, but in the hands of someone with less than a solid degree of computer expertise, Green thinks they often provide little more than a false sense of security. "Too often, a business thinks it has protected itself, but all it has is a front door without a lock on it."
   One product, SonicWALL, has managed to win Green over. Specifically designed for small businesses such as coffeehouses that want to provide a wireless network, the firewall product "provides real business-class security in a true wireless environment," according to Green. In addition to effectively isolating a business's information from other network guests, SonicWALL also isolates customers using the network from one another. This extra protection, while expensive (SonicWall retails for several hundred dollars), translates into what Green refers to as "due diligence on the business owner's part."
   For the coffeehouse owner who knows that getting wireless is good for business but has little interest in acquiring sufficient amounts of computer know-how, several companies, including Tx Systems, Cafe.com, Pacific Wi-Fi, and Internet Free Planet offer complete turnkey solutions. According to Jason Wimp, Tx Systems' director of operations, Tx System's new iCafe Wi-Fi package provides "the software, a wireless access point that plugs into your ISP connection and complete instructions," all for around $350. "We kept meeting café owners at trade shows who said they wanted the Internet for their customers, but they didn't want to spend all their time maintaining a system," Wimp says. "We tailored iCafe Wi-Fi toward the person who wants coffee to remain their core business."
   It should be noted that all of these companies' Wi-Fi packages, with the exception of Internet Free Planet, advocate charging customers for the Internet. Some of them even establish a payment system in which they receive a percentage of each of your store's Internet sales. While Tx System's iCafe Wi-Fi is not designed with any such payment plan on the back end, Wimp feels that the Internet usage revenue stream is too good to pass up. "One of our Southern California customers recently told me that the computer usage at her Internet café had brought in $30,000 last year," Wimp says. Still, he is quick to add that his company's iCafe Wi-Fi can easily be set up as a free service. "We left it as a choice for the café owner," Wimp says.
   While charging or not charging for Internet service is probably a question that the marketplace will resolve over time, barring wireless from the premises entirely is probably a moot point already. For the coffee establishment near any confluence of business, retail, culture, or academia (which is a nice way of including nearly every coffee shop on the planet), it's probably time to get your customers connected. For Jen Procter of Tiny's coffeehouse, wireless customers like Bryan Markovitz have "become an important part of the cultural environment." As long as folks like Markovitz keep ordering their lattes, they're likely to remain an important part of the business environment, too.

Allen Kinast is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to Fresh Cup Magazine. He can be reached at allenkinast@comcast.net.