McDonalds Free Wi-Fi Users Soak Up Seating 500
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."
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?
Coffee (Score:3, Funny)
HEYO!
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Coffee (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Coffee (Score:4, Funny)
They could simply stop sending the client webpages and start sending "Your time is up, thank you for eating at McDonald's! =D" pages after 15 minutes.
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]
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Funny)
Surely you mean Big MAC addresses?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Or a slightly less pathological solution which would nevertheless fix the issue: Simply record MAC addresses and after 15 minutes (or whatever) of use, ban the address for a couple of hours. Sure, a few of us will spoof MAC addresses until we find an unbanned one but the vast majority (and it's the vast majority's asses that are causing the problem) will just mooch off to a different Maccas.
Having worked for the company that runs McDonalds wifi networks, they most certainly do record the MAC addresses of everyone that uses their wifi network. This is how it keeps track of who's allowed through their firewall and who's not. They just need to decrease their connection time from 2 hours if they're really concerned about this.
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.
Re:Coffee (Score:4, Insightful)
Give them longer time during quiet periods too, if noone else wants the seats then keeping them full is better than leaving them empty, and someone who's sitting around trolling slashdot is more likely to want a drink or snack.
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.
Re:Coffee (Score:4, Funny)
How is that a change?
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.
Re:Coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I suggest the United States McDonalds keep doing what they already do: make the store environment resemble that of a public LIBRARY
There, fixed that for you.
Simple Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Funny)
And they employ sock puppets to promote their company on slashdot, too!
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!
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Have you seen MacDonalds' customers? Most of them bring extra seat padding with them! You'd need to have seats with 6 inch nails hammered upwards through the seat in order to penetrate the comfy cushions of flab...
Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, uncomfortable seats would not just make me stay as little as possible, but also to not come again if I can avoid it. Yes, that means I won't occupy seats any more, but I'll also not buy food from them any more.
Balance is the key. Not too good, not too bad.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You know how when you're done eating the waiter or waitress usually comes over to ask if you want either (a) dessert or (b) the check? They're not trying to make conversation with you, they want you to either spend money or get out of the chair.
There are a lot of nice coffee shops where they won't do that, they make you feel at home, etc. But not all of them are like that, and in what way is preferring a paying customer to one who's already finished indicative of scumbaggery?
"Goat head"...wonder if they tau
Re:Simple Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
This may actually be a good solution: they say a WiFi customer keeps a seat occupied for 35 mins while other customers do so only 10 mins. So they have less customers, hence less turnover, per seat.
As long as the seats are not all occupied, the extra WiFi users may add to their business, as they only occupy extra seats. However when all seats are occupied other customers may turn around and go to a competitor instead because they can not find an empty seat, and they are losing business.
More prudent in such a case would be to limit free WiFi either in duration (15 mins per connection/MAC address), or to certain periods of time, say not available from 12 to 2 (lunch time).
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.
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?
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course they have to be - any kid you feed McDonald's food to on a regular basis is going to be hyper and ADD. ;)
But on a related note, many parents hate the way McDonald's by-passes them and markets directly to their kids. I have friends who have had small children who barely set foot in a McDonald's until their seven year olds started begging to be taken there. There's someth
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple solution: limit how much TV your kids get to watch. Most marketing I remember towards kids when I was one was on TV.
We're only getting broadcast TV, which (except for PBS) eliminates most kiddie shows and hence kiddie advertising. DVDs will supply kids' shows worth watching.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Have they been remodeling the McDonalds in your area? They have in ours. They're completely demolishing and rebuilding them. You know what is missing from the new ones? Playgrounds. 4 McDonalds in our area have lost their playgrounds in the past two or three years. IMHO, McDonalds is kid-friendly no more. At least we still have Chik-fil-a around here. They have playgrounds, are about as healthy as fast food will ever get, and have a kid night where children get a free ice cream cone.
re: kid-friendly (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. The kid-friendly factor is key. I like Panera Bread, but I have yet to see a single one with a kid's "play place" in it.
There's also the related issue, that if you actually want some uninterrupted time to USE a wi-fi connection and read news, email, etc. while your kid is with you, you're NOT going to get it unless they offer things to keep your kid occupied at the same time.
I can't imagine taking even the most well-behaved kid to a regular restaurant, and expecting him/her to just quietly sit there,
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?
Re:Beyond Simple, just apply common sense! (Score:4, Insightful)
Qualification: I am childless and likely to remain so, not because of a lack of suitable partner.
I've seen this "ban kids from public places" rant before. It ignores a few points. From a practical point of view, it ignores that fact that parents of small children still need to occasionally go places, and sometimes need to take the child. To use your airliner example: since many places are unreachable or terribly inconvenient to reach without air travel from specific other places, it is more or less impossible to ban children on planes. "I am sorry ma'am, you cannot go to your father's funeral across the country, because we don't allow children on airplanes." Yeah, that's going to go over well. You think the air travel industry is in trouble now, wait till they stop allowing kids.
From a legal point of view, both children and their parent remain citizens and residents of their respective homes. I'm quite certain that there would be discrimination lawsuits in the offing at any legal attempt to bar them from various premise. While certainly it is within a proprietors right to ban children, I think people would have trouble with a government attempting to do so. As it IS within a business's rights to ban children, and very few chose to, it seems that the business case for it probably isn't that good. I'm sure that a decent sized town can support a few, and a larger city many more, restaurants that don't allow children to make for a more elegant dining experience. You can chose to frequent those. I seriously doubt that many low or mid range restaurants could afford the lost revenue though (and probably not even ALL high end restaurants).
In short: Children make noise. At least until they reach kindergarten age (or so) they are often incapable of NOT making noise. They simply haven't learned how to be quiet yet. Businesses that chose not to cater to children do exist, but to make up for excluding a large market, they usually charge more. Often for this reason they are "fancy" places. Most businesses probably cannot or would not want to afford to do this. Trying to ban children legally is almost certainly not possible.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a bad solution. First of all, I've never heard of Panera Bread, and there's definately not one local to me. Choices for free wifi are basically the library, a couple coffee places, or McDonalds.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think that just looking at the calories a good way to judge healthy food, you don't know much about nutrition. I'm not saying that either one of these companies sell more nutritional food than the other, but just comparing how much they don't have of a couple of things is like comparing the "cons" of something and failing to take into account the "pros". I suggest reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Googling it should find you a free PDF or the entire article somewhere.
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
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I especially like this line. Basically, they manufacture natural smoke flavor by burning stuff and capturing the smoke released into the air. And he presents this as a somehow unexpected, contrived method to bottle smoke flavor.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Dum da dah!!! Yes, that's right folks, McDonald's food is manufactured. That's a dirty word.
As usual, you miss the point. And you do it in the most loud and proud fashion too.
As I said originally, food is more than just the list of nutrients. A list that only measures a very small part of the complexity.
So McDonalds is manufactured out of the absolutely cheapest possible materials that are still edible and flavoring is added to make people think the food is of a higher quality than it is. Big deal you scream with bold words in a bold font. You like cardboard with corn oil and flavors, its frea
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What I want to know is, why don't these morons put their money where their mouths are and stop consuming any chemicals themselves? It would do the world a favor.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? Your friend with a PhD in food likes to cook for herself? I would not have guessed as much.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No sir,
You used the word hippie to imply that Schlosser's concerns are at best misguided, and the rest of your post was intended to discredit his arguments.
Please don't be so disingenuous
IIRC Schlosser does point out the weakness of "natural is always better" thinking, he gives the example of almond flavouring. The natural flavour contains very small amounts of cyanide, the artificial one doesn't. However the natural flavour commands a higher price because it is "natural" and therefore better.
The point abou
Re:Simple Solution (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the food is actually -too good- for us
weeeeell...
Since the natural world is fairly low on salt, sugar and fat, we're built to want as much as possible, because it practice that was the best way to get as close as possible to the optimum.
Because our modern world is different, our bodies' way of aiming for optimal is broken. Too much fat is bad for you, as we all know.
Similarly, we figure out if we get oxygen enough not by measuring oxygen but my measuring CO_2 which back then was a good enough approximation of a lack of oxygen. Nitrogen fools
Veggies (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Bullshit for nutrition snobs (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Since when does McDonald's want 'sticky' custom (Score:2)
Absolutely true. Also the fact their straws were (don't know if it's still true) a little wider than average so that customers would finish their drinks faster.
Why the heck they would want people to stay in their stores longer now I have no idea. Then again, why the heck anyone who can afford a laptop would want to hang out in their nasty ass stores, let alone EAT there, I have no idea either.
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.
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?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Learn the concept of paragraphs if you want your comments read.
No, I did not bother.
That's too bad. He had a few good points in there.
By all means, feel free to suggest to him that shorter paragraphs are useful on the web, to help people with a low IQ and short attention spans more easily digest what you write. The screen is a different medium to paper after all, so a paragraph of that size - that wouldn't be too out of place in a good textbook - is a little on the chunky side here.
But your blatant "make it
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
I still prefer my coffee shop. (Score:3, Funny)
Even if I did eat McDonalds food there I don't think I like the atmosphere enough to stay. There coffee tastes like piss anyway. With all the great local free wifi around where I live I'd have to be pretty desperate to go there. Simple solution: open up a coffee shop next door.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16951509/
That said, everyone is entitled to their opinion.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And there's the rub. In Australia (that place in the summary, I haven't RTFA either!) we don't have ubiquitous hotspots. The woeful state of our broadband has been discussed here many times before so I won't say anything more than that it's fault of those cunts at Telstra, and their douchebag former CEO (who incidentally used to be in charge of USWEST in Colorado, who were so shit they had to change their name to Qwest... OK I'm ranting here but god dammit my country does some retarded shit)
In summary, down
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So you confess to going into their store when you normally wouldn't and purchasing stuff? You utter bastard! Heaven forbid they earned a little more money that day. It's anarchists like you that make a mockery of cheap promotional stunts by honest, hardworking advertising executives.
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.
Re:What was the business plan? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought compact fluorescent lamps ran comparatively cooler than incandescent.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If we're going to quibble about poor spelling on an international forum here I may as well horrify many of the Americans here by stating that three of the coffees you can get are flat white, long black and short black. A few Aussies have been badly misuderstood in the USA when they asked African-American wa
I hate free wi-fi at fastfood stores... (Score:2)
McWiFi??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Last time I saw McWiFi, it was Windows only and needed some sort of login. I run Linux so no McWiFi for me...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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.
Turn it off when there are no seats. Duh. (Score:2, Interesting)
No brainer--but we are talking about McDonalds, aren't we?
Announce a policy of turning off the WiFi when the McDonalds is too full, and post a schedule of the normal times when free access is available. No skin off their noses if they have some extra customers when there are empty seats, eh?
Since this is McDonalds, I feel obliged to note that the nose skin goes into the hot dogs. Does McDonalds serve hot dogs? That's how long it's been since I've eaten there... Wait! Sausage. I'm pretty sure they had some k
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.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the idea behind the free wi-fi is not to keep people there longer, but to promote return visits. However it appears they ARE staying longer, and a "restaurant" like McDonalds can't cater to the lazy surfer. If it were seated area where customers were waited on and expected to order, this would likely not be an issue.
You're right though, McDonalds has brought this on themselves, but they're well within their rights to axe it just as quickly if it doesn't produce the expected results.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think having to go to the counter every 30 mins gets old quickly for the customer. It is irritating. This way it's great for a normal session (I can imagine very much using such a service when on business trip to read e-mail and reply some urgent matters, 30 mins is usually enough for that - otherwise just get a second ticket to finish your work), but not for WiFi camping in that shop for hours.
This sounds like a creative and smart solution to me. And I am not surprised it works very well.
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.
Solve the problem with trap doors under the seats (Score:3, Funny)
Tell the users that they can use the wireless until a trap door opens up underneath them and they are dumped into a vat of boiling french fries. Their times are announced by some junior on front counter with a megaphone.
"Come in number 192.168.1.121, your time is up"
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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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't news if the users of McD's wifi have to click through a page that discloses the surveillance program run by Clean Pipes before transmitting a packet to the Internet.
IMO, McD would be insane to set up the system in any other way.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope this isn't indicative of the general opinion that is being bred into today's society.
McDonalds are a business that relies on a appeal to families as well as adult customers. Restricting the service like this promotes their own policies as a kid-friendly establishment (ignoring for now their impact on the growth of obesity and unhealthy lifestyles), one of their major requirements as a business. If they are seen to be promoting the freedom to surf porn within their premises then they lose this reputat
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Simplest solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems that it's a net cost. The extra custom doesn't cover the increased cost of requiring more tables. Not quite sure what the point is.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I think they've already solved this... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but I don't think someone buying their cheapest coffee and sitting abusing the wi-fi for 3 hours compensates for the lost sales in all the other stuff.
Sure, at 3am, it might fill in some slack spots in their business, but at peak time, they want a regular rotation of clients to maximize peak-hour sales.
Ever tried getting into a Starbucks after about 7pm ? Absolutely jam packed, and invariably everyone is hogging the comfy seats with a laptop and a coffee cup with about 5mm of cold, 3 hour old coffee in