Of course, this is what they should have been doing all along with the
> Rowling and Salinger wannabes who hog the NY Times, take extra chairs
> to keep their precious crap off the floor, and sit at the choice
> tables for hours nursing an empty latte while reading Noam Chomsky. I
> really don't care if you're surfing for p*rn, doing your French Lit
> homework or writing the Great American Novel; drink your coffee, then
> get the hell out.
It's not quite so cut-and-dried. An empty business looks like an unpopular business. Having a few seats occupied, even if the people in the seats aren't buying, can make a coffee shop or restaurant look more popular, and thus increase sales.
The trick is getting just the right number of seat-warmers without cutting into your sales capacity. If you get too many of them, you take down some of the flypaper, but not all of it.
snipped-for-privacy@phred.org is Joshua Putnam
Books for Bicycle Mechanics and Tinkerers: