How should a cafe price? After all, most users are actually consuming multiple things at a coffeehouse. Yes, they are getting a jolt of caffeine and maybe a muffin, but they are also consuming a meeting space or a workspace. Indeed, that space may be more important to some customers if getting together with a friend or finding a place with WIFI is more the point of the visit than having a coffee.
That gets us to Tsiferblat, a Moscow-based chain of cafes that has a different pricing model than Starbucks and the rest of the industry. Here is how NPR tells it (Rubles For Minutes, Not Mochas, At Russian Cafe Chain, Jan 10):
Welcome to Tsiferblat in Moscow. It’s one of two in the city, and in English, it would be known as the Clockface Cafe.
When you enter, Polina Poliakova leads you to a cabinet filled with defunct alarm clocks. “When you come to Tsiferblat, first what you should do is take the clock,” she says, explaining what she calls “the ritual.”
So you choose a sturdy Soviet model and Poliakova notes your time of arrival. …
Clockface is the brainchild of Ivan Meetin, a 28-year-old who got started in the business by experimenting with a cafe that ran solely on donations.
Clockface is different, he says. “You don’t have to pay for coffee or tea or cookies,” Meetin says. “You should pay for time, and time costs — I hope — [are] not that expensive.” …
You pay two rubles a minute for the first hour — slightly less than $4 an hour — and then one ruble per minute for the time beyond that. Any time after five hours is free — so you can never spend more than about $12 per person.
