San Francisco Startup Takes On Wi-Fi Moochers

Coffeeshops are a favorite hangout for app developers and tech workers. They also have a serious problem: Wi-Fi moochers. You know the type — buying a small coffee and then taking up two tables and three outlets for hours on end of quality Internet hangout time. Honestly, most of us have been that obnoxious customer on a at least a few occasions.

Thankfully, a new startup is offering a solution that helps coffeeshops boost profits and provide good Wi-Fi, without loosing customers by making “no-laptop” tables or cutting it off altogether. GoGoGuest, produced by a group of San Francisco app developers, essentially gives customers one-hour tokens for accessing the public network with their purchase. They can stay as long as they want, but they’ll have to make a purchase each hour to earn it. The program has been a success at the Chai Bar in San Francisco, where a TechCrunch report says that there’s been a 30 percent conversion rate among customers with a tendancy to stick around as long as six hours.

GoGoGuest’s app developers are competing with existing one-time-code solutions for public Wi-Fi networks, but believes that they’ll be able to become the best option from the shop’s perspective by offering a dashboard with advanced analytics on network activity, allowing them to find and reward their best customers as well as offer promotions within the GoGoGuest network. (Certainly a big improvement on the confusing card-payment system at bigger coffeeshops like Starbucks and the like.)

The long term plan seems to be to build out a network of reliable workspaces for on-the-go tech workers — the holy grail of good coffee, strong Wi-Fi, and reasonable rates. Most of us would gladly pay a few extra dollars for a slightly better experience when working out on the go, and GoGoGuest is a compelling addition to the roster of options mobile and co-working spaces.