Café cottons on to the notion that time really is money

There’s a new café which has recently opened its door in London, attracting an unprecedented amount of publicity in the process – because this facility make you pay for how long you stay there, not what you drink.

Ziferblat, which already has a chain of ten cafés in its native Russia, has opened in east London, where it provides tea, coffee and Wi-Fi for nothing – but it’s 3p a minute to sit there.

So those who linger all day over a cold cup of coffee which end up incurring the cost of a slap-up dinner – while those who speed through their mid-morning cuppa will suffer nothing more upsetting than a scalded palette.

Ziferblat translates as clock face, and the whole thing works on the basis that, on entry, you pick up a clock from the cupboard, noting what time it is and then paying truppence for every minute you’ve been there on your way out.

You could be in and out in a minute if you’re really quick at drinking coffee and you’d even have enjoyed the free snacks as well. But even if you waited for an hour, that’s only £1.80 – a fraction of the price you’d pay in a more traditional coffee shop.

The difference is that you have to make your own coffee, using the in-house expresso machine but equally you’re welcome to bring your own food and heat in and eat it….all while the clock ticks up another 3p a minute.

It’s an idea that you’d love to see catching on here – ‘everything is free, except the time you spend there’ – and not just within the burgeoning café culture, but right across the board.

You could, for example, charge people who paw through the papers in a shop and then leave them back in a heap having half-read them for free, so that no one in their right mind would ever actually buy them.

Ditto, book shops – no more free browsing. If you want to rifle through a book you’ve no intention of buying, then at least you can offer up a few cent for the joy of holding someone else’s novel in your grubby hands.

People who got to pubs and order pints of tap water could now have all the uisce their bladder will bear – but in future they’d be paying a few bob for just standing there.

Those who just want to use the loo can now do so without the barman staring them out of it like they’d actually destroyed their own trousers – but they’ll have to pay the price for the number of minutes it has taken them to complete their ablutions.

A welcome side-effect of all this would be that pub bores would become a thing of the past because it would be too expensive to hang around – and we’d all get a barstool for the duration of our stay because the turnover of drinkers would be like a well-greased engine.

And it goes on – shoppers who go into clothes stores and try on items to be sure they fit, and then go home and purchase them on the internet, could be charged for the time they’ve taken up in the fitting room.

It wouldn’t make up the price of the garment, but it might level up the playing pitch – and at the very least make the internet generation value the face-to-face service they have on their own doorstep.

You could also see the growth of a whole new range of new shops – places to charge your mobile for a few minutes, for example – where you’ll find that time is, literally, money.

But the biggest positive about this concept is that it stops people vegetating in the one spot all day – all of a sudden wasting time comes at a price.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.