Re:Coffee shops are taking Wi-Fi off the menu
by c1sc0 on Monday August 09, 2010 @06:23AM
(#1587532)
Tea is hot right now, no pun intended. A few months ago I did a bit of market research for doing a tea-based startup. If anyone wants to do it, there's money to be made by simply blogging about exotic niche tea products, especially because most people drink absolutely garbage tea: there's room for education here.
I've had lunch with the President of a fair-sized coffee franchise in Canada and his stores give you a 1hr code with your purchase, but after that you can just go up and ask for codes each time they expire. He said 80-90% of people feel guilty and fork up another $3-5 for a drink/snack when they ask for a new WiFi code.
Other interesting tidbit: coffee sales are down a lot compared with tea (which also has higher margins). So if you run a coffee shop, a good way to distinguish yourself is to carry a wide variety of teas.