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McDonalds Free Wi-Fi Users Soak Up Seating
Posted by
samzenpus
on Tue May 12, 2009 10:42 PM
from the super-size-my-connection dept.
from the super-size-my-connection dept.
bfire writes "McDonalds has earmarked potential changes to seating plans in some restaurants to prevent free Wi-Fi users from monopolizing seating, particularly in peak periods. The availability of Wi-Fi means people are now spending 35 minutes in McDonalds — rather than the average ten minutes that patrons used to spend eating there. But it appears not everyone is happy with the increased 'stickiness' of customers, with some licensees in Australia reporting that Wi-Fi users aren't turning over seats fast enough. The restaurant chain is considering options including space demarcation to deal with the problem."
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Submission: McDonalds free wifi users soak up seating by Anonymous Coward
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Solution: Block Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Because we all know they are just sitting there waiting to get first post.
Oh wait...
Re:Solution: Block Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Losers?
Parent
Since when does McDonald's want 'sticky' customers (Score:5, Interesting)
I once heard that the reason McDonald's used to outfit its restaurants with hard plastic bench seats colored garish orange and yellow was for that reason -- so you wouldn't want to stick around too long. Has it changed its mind recently?
Re:Since when does McDonald's want 'sticky' custom (Score:5, Funny)
They don't want sticky customers. The signs in the bathrooms require that employees wash hands. But you know, the last time I was there, no employee would wash my hands... I wanted to complain but people made me leave.
Parent
Re:Since when does McDonald's want 'sticky' custom (Score:4, Funny)
They don't want sticky customers. The signs in the bathrooms require that employees wash hands. But you know, the last time I was there, no employee would wash my hands... I wanted to complain but people made me leave.
If your hands were sticky after leaving the bathroom stall, the employees were right to refuse service.
Parent
Re:Since when does McDonald's want 'sticky' custom (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems to me that they could have a system set up such that you buy something and you can request a code for minutes of WiFi, maybe every dollar you spend on their product gets you a bonus of five minutes internet time. A combo would be half an hour. That way you don't get the people that just buy a coffee (or even not even buy anything) and stick around for an hour. That should cut the average time down and free up the seats.
I think I've heard of some shops turning off WiFi during rush hours simply because they don't have enough seats and would end up losing customers because people that want what they're selling end up going elsewhere.
Parent
Re:Since when does McDonald's want 'sticky' custom (Score:4, Informative)
Has it changed its mind recently?
Apparently, but some franchisees are complaining (rightly IMHO) about "too much" turnaround time in their restaurants. The "fast turnaround" has always been a selling point, either stated or implied, for any potential McDonalds franchisee. For those of you who don't know or have never owned a franchise many business details are NOT up to you the owner, but rather are spelled out in your franchise agreement with the franchise owners (i.e. the McDonalds Corporation). So for example, if the franchise owners decide that all locations will now offer fancy coffee then you must pay for and have the necessary equipment installed even if you don't think that such expansion would be worth the cost in your particular location, perhaps a truck stop in the midwest were overcooked eggs and plain black coffee are the "traditional" breakfast. In this case McDonalds has mandated that you provide WiFi access to customers because the marketing drones at corporate have decided that all hip restaurants catering to the under thirty crowd must offer free WiFi to be relevant. However, this may be the first time that a new directive from corporate has conflicted with a long standing element of the core business (which many franchisees count on for their profitability), namely fast turnaround of tables in the dinning area.
Parent
Re:Since when does McDonald's want 'sticky' custom (Score:5, Funny)
Well then.. what do you call a Quarter pounder in Chile?
McRoyale with cheese, motherfucker?
Parent
well.... (Score:4, Interesting)
What did they think would happen ?, of course people are going to stay longer maybe add more seating or extend the range to cover a larger area so users could sit in their cars and use the WIFI there.
Just a thought
R.Morton
Amazing (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's see...connection time is free, **AA complaints go to McD's IP address, and people stay longer...what are the odds of THAT?
rj
What was the business plan? (Score:5, Interesting)
I never understood what was the point of putting these things in places where turnover is a few minutes. It encourages loitering. It is not like customers pay for refills, or are otherwise likely to buy more product.
Of course the solution is simple. Do what other places are doing. Limit the time. If they want turnover in 10 minutes, make that the time limit. The point stands, though. WiFi in places like this just seems silly. OTOH, I know of places that have gone out of business after they got rid of the WiFi. They did not like hanging around in the afternoon drinking coffee, but those same people also stopped coming around for the evening meal.
Re:What was the business plan? (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of places here in CFL have taken to sticking a second antenna outside and letting all the freeloaders sit outside doing their thing. The heat tends to get rid of them quickly, and those that do stay tend to be more likely to buy things, and the ones that are hell bent on getting just free internet and nothing else still wind up attracting customers without using up too much space.
Parent
Re:What was the business plan? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought compact fluorescent lamps ran comparatively cooler than incandescent.
Parent
Why people only stay seated for 10 minutes.. (Score:5, Funny)
rather than the average ten minutes that patrons used to spend eating there
I only ever sat there for 10 minutes because that's all it took for the diarrhea to activate after eating that addictive crap. Sitting any longer and the chairs would be a different color.
They're all Googling "Heart Disease" (Score:5, Funny)
PANERA solved this, by limits during peak hours (Score:5, Interesting)
PANERA Bread already solved this problem. If you go to a PANERA during peak hours, you get roughly 10-15 minutes of free WiFi, and then you're shut off, at the MAC address level. Thankfully, I have GNU macchanger [alobbs.com] installed, so I can grab some more time, but they're already doing it programatically.
What's funny is watching someone come in, spill out their entire office on the table (manila file folders, laptop, external number pad and everything), and then get shut off because they sat chatting at the coffee machine for 10 minutes while their laptop was connected, and shut their laptop down, only to stare at me working for 30+ minutes at a time.
Am I breaking the rules? Maybe... but I also buy a breakfast, then a tea, then a lunch in the same 1-2 hours I'm there. I also have WWAN, so if WiFi was turned off, I could still continue to work, without changing anything (all built-in).
McDonalds should just limit the free wifi to 10-15 minutes and be done with it. Oh, and also SHUT IT OFF at the end of the night, so people don't just park in the parking lot and steal your wifi for nefarious means.
As with most of these "problems", the solution is rarely technical. It is usually a political problem that stops the solution from being implemented.
Re:PANERA solved this, by limits during peak hours (Score:5, Funny)
Thankfully, I have GNU macchanger installed
You can also use /etc/network/interfaces:
iface bond0 inet dhcp
hwaddress ether de:ca:fb:ad:d0:0d
For extra fun, send messages to Starbucks in your MAC.
Parent
Idiot business majors (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the idiocy of how some businesses deal with networking and the internet. First, they offer free. Then they find out when you offer free, people actually use it, and so the same business turns around and gets upset that people are using what you are offering for free?
Yes, people like free wi-fi, and you offered it in order to drum up traffic and hope those customers would buy stuff, which they did. But you like the business it brings in but you don't like those people freeloading on your network and in your seats when you need more people to be buying stuff?
Yo, McDonalds! Suck it up! You put yourself in this position now you have to deal with it like adults. You either have to limit free to like ten minutes of free, which does reduce the number of people who will come in since they might go to the coffee shop down the road, charge access fees, which also reduces walk ins, or accept that your restaurants don't have enough seats any more. You got greedy and wanted to steal some of the coffee shop crowd to your stores and now you are dealing with the fact that two business ideas are conflicting. Coffee shops work well with wi-fi business models because they have comfy chairs and lounges and expect their clientel to pay a lot for coffee and sit down for a while. It's about atmosphere. You have cheap coffee, no atmosphere, and expect to be selling coffee in volume.
I have a feeling Mickey D's is going to come up with stupid artificial rules that it will expect their employees to enforce and it's going to get ugly and moronic before they end the free wi-fi.
Simple solution (Score:5, Interesting)
A simple solution : print an access code on tickets you receive when buying some food. Should only be unique and valid for a couple of minutes. Access code expired ? Buy more stuff or get the hell out ! Solved.
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Informative)
Starbucks in Switzerland does something like this. It's free wireless, not even a purchase required: all you have to do is go to the counter and ask for an access card. However, that access card expires 30 minutes after activation, and to keep going, you have to request another.
I'm not sure that would work back in America; it plays off people's shame and only works if they don't keep asking for cards. However, it seems to work well here.
Parent
Why does McDonalds need traffic? (Score:4, Insightful)
The whole point of McDonalds was to get the people in and get them out, as quickly as possible. IF you go to any decently run McDonalds, there will be several times as many cars as there are in any other food place in the area. Those franchises just print money. Putting in wifi just slows down the presses.
Wrong headline. (Score:5, Interesting)
Business offers customers free wifi, which has the twin effects of attracting more customers and some of them staying longer. This is news? In other breaking news headlines, water is wet!
What caught my eye was the last two paragraphs of the article:
The wifi service is backed by a secure internet gateway product from wholesaler earthwave called Clean Pipes, which is there in part to apply McDonalds' Family Friendly policies to the service.
It had so far not detected any major 'red flag' sessions that had to be reported to law enforcement authorities, a representative of earthwave said.
Why isn't the news story here that McDonalds has a program in place to spy on customer's wifi usage, to get customers arrested?
If my phone company were eaves dropping on my conversations to report to the police, I would have a problem with that.
If my ISP were eaves dropping on my internet phone calls or other communications to report to the police, I would have a problem with that.
If a company is offering free wifi connections, obviously the standards are somewhat different than dealing with my own phone company or my own ISP, however I still consider it outrageous and a primary news item that a company *does* have a program in place to spy on communications over their free wifi, one dedicated to having those customers arrested.
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McDonalds in Korea (Score:5, Informative)
To maximize seating efficiency at peak times, in Korea McDonalds apparently has ushers that will place customers in empty seats next to other customers.
Choice of music is another tool commonly used to influence how long customers stay. At peak times, they'll play up-beat songs. At off-peak times they'll play more soothing music to encourage people to hang around longer, so as to avoid having the place look like a ghost town.
And there's always the 'Can I take your tray sir/madam' line when they're getting desperate. I get that one a lot when I'm half-finished, annoys the crap out of me. So I like to chew, what's wrong with that?
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Funny)
And they employ sock puppets to promote their company on slashdot, too!
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Funny)
And they employ sock puppets to promote their company on slashdot, too!
Food, wi-fi, AND a puppet show? Man, I am never leaving this place!
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Go to Panera Bread. They have free wi-fi there, too. The food is quite a bit better, and healthier, than all that fried and preprocessed crap that McDonald's dishes out,...
How do you suggest Panera Bread handle it when their seats start getting filled-up by people using the Wi-Fi?
Your solution has nothing to do with the problem of the article.
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked with him for a bit on a proposal for wifi for customers, but I don't think it would have been good for them in retrospect.
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, I also don't see what the big deal is with people sticking around too long in the dining room. 80% of their business is drive-through anyway, and 90% is breakfast and lunch, when people are in a hurry. McDonald's does more business between 11:30 and 12:30 than they do from 2pm to closing. Their dining rooms typically sit empty in the evenings, when people would have time to sit around.
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Panera Bread has 1,230 locations in 40 states. McDonald's has more than 31,000 in all 50 states and tons of other countries. Panera Bread sells high quality but overpriced food, while McDonald's sells low to middling quality food super cheap. They are not competing in the same segment at all.
So do you work for Panera Bread or are you a franchisee?
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question for some of us is, are they kid friendly?
I spent quite a few years going to McDonald's because they were kid friendly. The nice restaurants I went to before becoming a parent were nice, but they weren't the kind of place that you could feel comfortable with a 2 year old. This is the big selling point of McDonald's, you can have a hyper kid there and not feel guilty for disturbing the next table.
Parent
Re:Beyond Simple, just apply common sense! (Score:5, Funny)
I got a vasectomy for a reason.
In your case, wouldn't that be like winterizing a home in Florida?
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The food is quite a bit better, and healthier, than all that fried and preprocessed crap that McDonald's dishes out,...
"Better" is subjective, but I doubt you'll find it especially healthier. (Go ahead. Ask for their nutritional guidelines -- you know, the kind that are on every @#$!ing McDonald's wall.)
Whether you like fried and preprocessed crap or BAKED and preprocessed crap is a matter of taste.
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Man, you weren't kidding. Compare Panera Bread sandwiches [panerabread.com] (page 4 of the PDF), with McDonald's sandwiches [mcdonalds.com] (select sandwiches from the drop down). The highest calorie sandwich from McDonald's is 740 calories. The highest calorie Panera Bread sandwich is the Full Chipotle Chicken on Artisan French at 1070 calories. Panera Bread has no fewer than 16 sandwiches that exceed the calories of the Double Quarter Pounder.
I thought McDonald's food was unhealthy, but damn Panera Bread's stuff is even worse! Panera Bread's stuff is also loaded with sodium, even more so in many cases than the notoriously sodium-heavy McDonald's fare. In fact, their highest sodium sandwich has more than twice the sodium as McDonald's highest sodium sandwich! Trying to pass off Panera Bread as a "healthier alternative" seems like a pretty irresponsible thing to do.
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh. My. God. You mean they make food out of chemicals? That's bad. That's really bad.
No, but seriously, Eric Schlosser is an uneducated hippie. Oh, but he studied History at Princeton.. woo..
McDonald's fries now come from huge manufacturing plants that can peel, slice, cook, and freeze two million pounds of potatoes a day. [..] A McDonald's french fry is one of countless foods whose flavor is just a component in a complex manufacturing process. The look and the taste of what we eat now are frequently deceiving -- by design.
Dum da dah!!! Yes, that's right folks, McDonald's food is manufactured. That's a dirty word. Only bad, terrible things come out of factories.. like child labor. If food is not made in small quantities by your Mom then it has to be bad for you. It has to be.
Everywhere I looked, I saw famous, widely advertised products sitting on laboratory desks and tables. The beverage lab was full of brightly colored liquids in clear bottles. It comes up with flavors for popular soft drinks, sports drinks, bottled teas, and wine coolers, for all-natural juice drinks, organic soy drinks, beers, and malt liquors. In one pilot kitchen I saw a dapper food technologist, a middle-aged man with an elegant tie beneath his crisp lab coat, carefully preparing a batch of cookies with white frosting and pink-and-white sprinkles. In another pilot kitchen I saw a pizza oven, a grill, a milk-shake machine, and a french fryer identical to those I'd seen at innumerable fast-food restaurants.
That's right folks. Food technologists (scientists!) are responsible for the tastes in all these manufactured foods. They're making stuff taste good.. evil bastards!
It also makes the smells of household products such as deodorant, dishwashing detergent, bath soap, shampoo, furniture polish, and floor wax. All these aromas are made through essentially the same process: the manipulation of volatile chemicals. The basic science behind the scent of your shaving cream is the same as that governing the flavor of your TV dinner.
Yes, he is implying that you're eating deodorant and dishwashing detergent and floor wax. No. He didn't actually say that shaving cream is in your TV dinner, but he wants you to think about it.
A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found in a Burger King strawberry milk shake, contains the following ingredients: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.
Scary words!!! Scary words!!! The article doesn't mention that "natural" flavors don't come with lists of ingredients.. you simply don't know what's in them. But here's a hint, if "natural strawberry flavoring" was made from strawberries, they would just list "strawberries" as an ingredient.
THE small and elite group of scientists who create most of the flavor in most of the food now consumed in the United States are called "flavorists." They draw on a number of disciplines in their work: biology, psychology, physiology, and organic chemistry.
These are all things you don't understand, and he used
Parent
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Panera bread doesn't have chicken nuggets (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm selective about what I eat from there
I would be willing to bet that McDonalds and Panera share more than a few suppliers for their products. I think selectivity in food probably doesn't actually buy you too much in the long run. The human body has evolved to eat some genuinely sick stuff, and even the Golden Arches is a damn site better than a few bits of rib meat from a four day dead Zebra. If there's a problem with McDonalds, and other modern foods, medical science seems more to conclude that the food is actually -too good- for us, and so we get fat. I think the only thing one can do is probably fast one day a week, to simulate the conditions for which we are bred.
Parent
Bullshit for nutrition snobs (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. There is no such thing as "empty calories". That very concept is on par with those who sell you some holistic natural salt based on claims that its mollecules are more jagged like the natural ones, not round and unnatural like the industrial made ones. Or on par with the audiophile-grade network cables. It's bullcrap for idiots who want to feel all superior about their nutrition, but aren't actually smart or educated enough to understand nutrition.
For a start pretty much any animal meat will contain the same aminoacids (in its proteins) as your body is made of. There is very little you can do, short of incinerating that meat to a fine ash, to destroy those and be left with "empty calories."
Do you understand that? There is no fucking thing that McDonald can do to a piece of beef or chicken (while still keeping it edible at all) to stop it from having the exact same 20 aminoacids that your body uses or needs.
Also your body is very good at synthetising various things from various other things. E.g., sugars get turned into fats and viceversa. (Which is why Atkins works or why drinking will give you a fat liver.) E.g., over half the aminoacids can be synthetised from other stuff, and viceversa.
Even "empty calories" would still have their use, since the above synthesis takes energy, same as anything your body uses. It has to come from somewhere.
But again, there is no such thing as "empty calories". There are sugars, fats, proteins, etc, which incidentally your body can all burn to energy. Or use in other ways.
"Different types of calories" and storing the different types as fat? Do you even know what a calory is, junior? Or what fat is? It's the same fat stored in your cells either way. If your body can convert something into fat, it will be the same fat which is used as an energy reserve. As the _same_ kind of energy reserve, as it'll get converted into glucose first when it's needed as fuel.
There is no such thing as storing, say, vitamins or proteins as fat for later.
So do yourself a favour. If you want to talk about nutrition, read about nutrition, not sensationalist pseudo-science or sensationalist propaganda.
Parent
Re:Turn it off when there are no seats. Duh. (Score:5, Funny)
I've read over your post four times now and I still have no idea what your point is.
Something about hot dogs? Now I'm all hungry again after dinner, thanks.
Parent
Re:McWiFi??? (Score:4, Informative)
That's weird, I've never heard of controlled access wifi that's Windows only. Unless they were using some sort of weird ActiveX control, I don't know why such a thing would be necessary.
When I was doing controlled access WiFi systems like that, it was basically a web page based login. Upon successful login, it just adds a firewall rule for your MAC address so you can get around the Internet. If it's timed, after a certain amount of time the firewall rule is removed. You'd have to jump through some hoops to make such a thing Windows-only.
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:4, Funny)
Or make the wifi users eat McDonalds food. That'll kill them off quickly, freeing up all those valuable seats.
--
Slow Poke [pair.com]
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Funny)
Surely you mean Big MAC addresses?
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of off the shelf wifi systems that can print out an access code good for x minutes. Just make EVERY receipt for over an arbitrary amount, say $5, have a code good for 20 minutes. Want more? Buy another $5 worth of stuff (or fish unused receipts out of the trash).
This is a reasonably simple system that most anyone can understand and explain, even the McD employee at the register.
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
I suggest the United States McDonalds keep doing what they already do: make the store environment resemble that of a public bathroom as much as possible so as to make it miserable to linger around in. Allow creepy and smelly homeless people to linger around the place for added ambiance. Overuse of the wifi will then be the least of their problems.
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:4, Funny)
How is that a change?
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you're saying creepy and smelly homeless people are less human than the rest of us, and should be shipped off somewhere where they won't offend our delicate sensibilities?
Homeless and poor people often go to a McDonalds, because it's a a single serving (nowhere to store the leftovers), and it's hot, reasonably good food, cheap. They linger there for warmth, for restroom access, because their pride tells them they paid money, so they're allowed to be there, and a host of other reasons too. Homeless people are people. Most of them have some sort of mental illness and with proper treatment could become productive members of society again, but with no treatment, they end up self medicating with drugs and alcohol, exacerbating the financial and psychological problems that led to them being homeless in the first place.
I'm one of the lucky ones. I never got caught up in self medicating with drugs and alcohol, so when circumstances changed slightly, I was able to leverage that to get out of homelessness, and eventually into running and owning my own business. But I spent enough time homeless to know what it's like. They are people.
Parent
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I think they've already solved this... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent