Interesting business experiment in Seattle area

VonVulcan · Post by **VonVulcan** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:23 pm

http://www.terrabite.org/

Lobber · Post by **Lobber** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 7:49 pm

My Favorite Comment on this site:

Posted by: Jessi | January 24, 2007 at 01:21 PM, who wrote:I went down to Terra Bite randomly on a Sunday with my best friend because Janis had told me about it. Katie and I had this plan to just go in, get coffee and not pay because we wanted to see how it felt to just not pay. We ended up feeling so guilty that we drove back paid double what we would have and I offered to put a bumper sticker on my car to help advertise...it's a crazy mind game they have going there.

AceCombat · Post by **AceCombat** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 8:11 pm

interesting.....

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 9:38 am

Sounds nice but I think most people who hear about this will go there just for free stuff.

We don't live in a society where people have decent morals.

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 6:56 pm

Merl I think you will be surprised: I think they will actually make MORE money than if they put prices on their food.

See, the thing is, that people do not want to appear cheap, and they are therefore likely to place a higher price on their food/coffee than the actual business would.

Of course, bad food and bad coffees won't get paid for, so there is a large incentive for the business to serve very good food.

The true down-and-outs might go there once, and not pay - but they won't come back.

Unix · Post by **Unix** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 7:51 pm

I think you're right mobi.

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 8:27 pm

Problem is, to server good foods you need to buy good food which cost more and hire better cooks which cost more. So the price that most people will pay will be the same they pay everywhere else.

I still think they won't last.

Maybe I'll be wrong.

Lobber · Post by **Lobber** » Wed Feb 07, 2007 9:03 pm

Most people think that people wont pay, but like those women stated, the guilt was overwhelming, and they overcompensated for their niggardliness.

It's more likely that a person will try to imagine how much their food or coffee will cost, and pay just slightly more than that amount, and end up overpaying considerably.

Also consider this: the business pays no taxes on that income, as it is all donations.

Isaac · Post by **Isaac** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:58 am

beats my \"i'll kick you in the butt for 25cents\" business

TIGERassault · Post by **TIGERassault** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 12:14 pm

Sweet! Free food!

Foil · Post by **Foil** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:12 pm

It's nearly a social experiment, and I'm interested to see if it works. Not that it'll \"restore my faith in mankind\" or \"disillusion me about human nature\", but I'm curious to see if generosity overcomes their losses due to non-payers.

Q: Do we know if they have a policy about habitual non-payers? They have the legal right to quit serving them, but doing so might hurt their reputation.

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:49 pm

I'd probably pay $2 for a coffee, just because that's how much a cup of joe should cost. See, you can work around the whole guilty conscience thing by trying to morally justify being a cheapskate.

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 2:49 pm

I pay $1.55 for a large coffee here, I wouldn't pay more and I think it should be less.

Jeff250 · Post by **Jeff250** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:11 pm

The Starbucks coffees tend to average around $3. I think they have bland'o'coffee for better prices, but I've always had somewhat of a sweet tooth, which corresponds to most of their menu.

You know, now that I think about it, Starbucks has already institutionalized this whole optional payment / guilty conscience thing for a while, but it's just been in the form of a tip jar.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:48 pm

Mobius wrote:Merl I think you will be surprised: I think they will actually make MORE money than if they put prices on their food.

See, the thing is, that people do not want to appear cheap, and they are therefore likely to place a higher price on their food/coffee than the actual business would.

Of course, bad food and bad coffees won't get paid for, so there is a large incentive for the business to serve very good food.

The true down-and-outs might go there once, and not pay - but they won't come back.

I think you might be right here Mobi, but there may be a counter example of this where the "down and outs" are concerned. Here in the Northwest there is a Large department store francise called "Nordstrums". They are several steps above Mace's where the clientel's pocket book is concerned. they are also a very nice storel. Everyone one of their locations has a Cafe' and USED to sell bottomless coffee for 25 cents. Well. the homeless caught wind of this and started frequenting the stores in large enough numbers that it was driving off customers. (there are some really dirty folks that live on the streets around here) But instead of disallowing entrence to that group of people they simply raised the price to a full dollar. this was about 12 years ago.

Personally, I hope this experiment works. Granted that it wouldn't work everywhere; but being downtown Seattle in the business district, I think it has a reasonable chance. BTW Seattle is a HUGE HUGE city these days .. and yes we have paved streets. Those came in last year.

Oh, and for city that is built mostly on a hill, it now has a subway. (for nearly 20 years now) so go figure.

CDN_Merlin · Post by **CDN_Merlin** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:51 pm

Duper, Montreal (where I grew up) has had a subway since the 60's and it sits on an extinct volcano.

Duper · Post by **Duper** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:50 pm

.......Canada was given volcanoes? does congress know about this??

;D

Interesting business experiment in Seattle area

Interesting business experiment in Seattle area

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