Fortune Mag

Fortune Mag, October 1993

CAFÉ SOCIETY VIA INTERNET 

Eighteen coffeehouses in and around San Francisco have gone on-line, installing com- puter terminals that operate more or less like jukeboxes: a quarter in the slot buys four minutes during which you can hook into the Internet and send a message to Moscow, say, or chat electronically with customers in other wired-up San Francisco cafés. Says Wayne Gregori, 36, founder of SF Net, which builds and programs the café computers: "We specifically target cafés in low-income areas. We're trying to get the have-nots on the computer." 

The Horseshoe Coffee House, one of the first cafés to install Gregori's computers, is on a seedy block of Haight Street. The traffic on its two terminals comes from many quarters, including dropouts, slackers, and the gainfully em- ployed. A recent Wednesday afternoon found Scott Williams, 31, enjoying a day off from his job as a salesman at the Emporium, a local store. Says he: "I usually do this from home, but I was in the neigh- borhood. It's an addiction." 

Williams was there to partake of Gregori's chat network, the most popular feature of the café's computer. There are 450 subscribers who pay $7 a month for access to the system from home, but most of the 

business is nonsubscriber and includes punk rockers and homeless people. Gregori, a former real estate broker and computer consultant, has be- gun negotiations in New York City, Minneapolis, and Atlanta to install computers in cafés in those cities that would hook up with the San Franciscans. 

What's in it for the cafés? They collect a small percentage of the coin revenues. Plus, a public-access computer draws customers. The Horseshoe is particularly popular with foreign tourists, though that can be a mixed blessing. Says man- ager Sohel Rahman: "We get a lot of Germans, much to our chagrin. German tourists never tip." 

- Jennifer Reese