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PAUL BOUTIN — Wireless Internet cafes are the most cost-effective office space ever, but you know you're mooching. A cup of coffee is good for thirty minutes at a table, but what if you're going to be there all day, maybe every day? After the jump, the unpublished rental rates.

"Here at Coffee To The People, we need to bring in on average $100 PER HOUR simply to cover our costs," CTTP staffer Karin Tamerius blogs from her Haight-Ashbury establishment. "That means, if all of our customers were people who stayed for three hours and spent $1.50 for coffee, we would require 200 people in our shop every hour we were open, 7 days a week, just to stay in business."

The solution? For the progressives at CTTP, it's obviously a sliding scale: Karin suggests $3/hr in food and drink purchases for students, $5 for SVUG-reading professionals. The basic P&L is the same for most Bay Area cafes. Caffe Roma in North Beach posts its value proposition: "If you are extending your stay, please purchase another item." But there are several more undocumented parameters:

  • Unless the place has a sign forbidding laptop use, you're welcome to boot up.
  • If you're not paying for Wi-Fi, spend about $5 an hour on coffee, snacks and tips. If the place is packed, make it ten.
  • Not hungry? Take your five-spot and put it in the tip jar.
  • Carry a power strip! One outlet can power twenty 100-watt laptops without blowing a fuse. That's still less wattage than your hair dryer.
  • Hogging the socket is the #1 laptop offense. If there aren't enough power outlets for everyone, charge up your laptop just enough to run for an hour. Then let someone else jack in until you need to recharge.
  • Laptop Offense #2: If it's crowded, offer to share your table.