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The number one suggestion we have received at Edhat over the last year is for us to find out which coffee shops in town have wireless Internet. Subscribers want to know where they can go to eat a meal and email at the same time. They want to know where they can go for chat rooms and Chai. They want to get wired on caffeine without any wires at all! The dedicated staff of edhat.com, not ones to let our subscribers down, embarked on a wireless mission to find all the places in town where we could buy a cup of coffee and log on. We called and visited places in town that advertise themselves to the world as coffee shops. We asked them about wireless, how much they charge for it, and how much they charge for coffee as well. The dedicated staff is not clear as to whether people actually order coffee at coffee shops.
“These drinks are more like milk shakes than coffee,” said Jayne Hurley, senior nutritionist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “Still, I doubt that many people expect that a drink from Starbucks can be as bad for your arteries as a three-quarter-pound New York strip steak.” As far as wireless is concerned, some places give it away for free (Reds, Coffee Cat, Bogart’s, Mojo Coffee, Java Jones, and Pierre La Fond), others charge or require you to register with a paid service (Starbucks, Borders, Goleta, Good Cup, Java Station, and Muddy Waters), others are planning on implementing it soon (Coffee Bean, Hot Spots, Sienna) and still others (purists, you might call them) don’t have any wireless ambitions at all (Peet’s, Vices & Spices, and Santa Barbara Roasting). We’d wager a guess that Vices & Spices, Santa Barbara’s oldest coffee shop, will never become wireless. Krista and Jason, husband and wife owners of Coffee Cat, seem pretty happy with their wireless. Ample seating and fast connections make Coffee Cat one of the most popular places for casual business meetings. Krista reports that most people who hook into their wireless buy at least a coffee. It is like an unwritten rule. Check out Edhat’s cool coffee map to see the big wireless picture. The green dots are free wireless, the yellow dots are pay-to-surf, and the red dots are no Internet available – no daily Edhats delivered there. As far as coffee prices are concerned … just like pizzas, sizes are primarily determined by the size of the packaging. The available sizes are 12 oz, 16 oz, and 20 oz. All coffee shops we checked sell a 16 oz cup. Most sell the 12 oz and 20 oz. Only Coffee Cat and Muddy Waters sell alternate sizes - Coffee Cat sells a 10 oz small and Muddy Waters (we think) sells an 8 oz. The female barista at Muddy Waters was reading an arty book called “SEX” when she told us. Either she or the dedicated staff was distracted, because we never did get a straight answer on their small cup size. Once again, we found the most expensive coffee at Northstar, and the cheapest at Siena. The new owners of Java Jones also own Siena. They told us that eventually they were going to bring the Siena prices in line with the higher ones at Java Jones. The average price of a 12 oz coffee is $1.50, a 16 oz coffee is $1.71, and a 20 oz coffee is $1.86. In yesterday’s contest, GinaF came the closest with a guess of $1.45 and $1.85 (for large and small). GinaF wins two tickets to a lecture at UCSB on Sunday by Jon Kabat-Zinn on Mind-Body Medicine. We wonder what he thinks about coffee and Frappuccinos. Want to get instant fame and cool prizes? ... enter today’s contest We want to hear from you ... tell us what you think of this tidbit |
It has nothing to do with wireless Internet or coffee prices, but blue skies were a welcome sight this morning.