[patio11]

Any cafe which wants to make free WiFi available can trivially make free WiFi available. I believe that most which choose to not do this are making the considered product/marketing decision that they do not want long stays from laptop users. They want to turn those tables quickly because $4 to $6 coffees only make Tokyo commercial rents if you sell a lot of them.

[ekianjo]

> They want to turn those tables quickly because $4 to $6 coffees only make Tokyo commercial rents if you sell a lot of them.

Then how does Starbucks make money then ? Most of the clients in Starbucks in Japan come for a drink with their computer or iPad and stay an hour or even more without consuming anything else - and they have their own internet access via tethering anyway. Yet Starbucks makes huge profits.

[patio11]

100 million yen per year per store of sales, or roughly 500 tickets per day, is how Starbucks stays afloat.