I’m not sure how complete my mental model is, but at least one factor is the cost/benefit of providing non-monetized services (comfortable space to hang out, taking hours of table space for relatively small payment). If you have a relatively small group of people providing most of your revenue, you can give them a lot of freebies without monitoring.
It becomes a disaster if strangers use up all your space for just a day at a time, crowding out your regulars. It is also problematic if mobility across providers is too common, as people can then choose DIFFERENT places to hang out in than they spend money in.
Really, this is just one aspect of the “race to the bottom” that purely economic optimization encourages. You’d rather sell a large amount of coffee/food very quickly to strangers, and just not provide the comfortable environment that doesn’t bring in revenue.
If you get 100 customers a day, 95% of which are well-known regulars, you need to monitor 5 of them more closely for bad-actor behavior, and you kicking out a non-regular is seen as detrimental to 5% of your people that day[1].
If you get 100 customers a day, 5% of which are well-known regulars, you need to monitor 95 of them more closely for bad-actor behavior, and you kicking out a non-regular is seen as detrimental to 95% of your people that day[1].
Why was regularity / non-anonymity a factor that contributed to this format’s viability?
I’m not sure how complete my mental model is, but at least one factor is the cost/benefit of providing non-monetized services (comfortable space to hang out, taking hours of table space for relatively small payment). If you have a relatively small group of people providing most of your revenue, you can give them a lot of freebies without monitoring.
It becomes a disaster if strangers use up all your space for just a day at a time, crowding out your regulars. It is also problematic if mobility across providers is too common, as people can then choose DIFFERENT places to hang out in than they spend money in.
Really, this is just one aspect of the “race to the bottom” that purely economic optimization encourages. You’d rather sell a large amount of coffee/food very quickly to strangers, and just not provide the comfortable environment that doesn’t bring in revenue.
If you get 100 customers a day, 95% of which are well-known regulars, you need to monitor 5 of them more closely for bad-actor behavior, and you kicking out a non-regular is seen as detrimental to 5% of your people that day[1].
If you get 100 customers a day, 5% of which are well-known regulars, you need to monitor 95 of them more closely for bad-actor behavior, and you kicking out a non-regular is seen as detrimental to 95% of your people that day[1].
Assuming that all non-regulars see you kicking out a non-regular as a bad thing, and none of the regulars do.