The latest branch of the House of Blues opened Monday, featuring live blues, Cajun food - and Internet access. The House of Blues is the first in the latest wave of national restaurants serving modems along with meals and music. Starbucks and Apple are planning similar forays.
Cyber cafes are nothing new. If anything, the first wave of plugged-in cafes are starving for customers. The new and bigger players in this field are responding by raising the stakes with much more ambitious offerings.
"It's not a cyber cafe - this isn't a place where you plug a quarter into a computer and surf Playboy," says Marc Schiller, House of Blues' vice president of new media. "This is putting entertainment and business on the same network."
The bulk of the world's 300-plus cyber cafes are largely small, independent operations reaching out to techies and travelers. The next generation of cyber venues is going after newbies who prefer their technology in the wings instead of center stage. Cyber cafe operators are using big brands and Hollywood glitz to draw them in.
The House of Blues has placed terminals in every booth, offering high-speed Internet access, live celebrity chats, and robotic cameras in its other venues. Starbucks' terminals will offer video conferencing, Internet access, and online shopping alongside their caramel macchiatos.
"We're not going to just tap into the Internet and tell our customers to go for it," says Jon Williams, brand development director at Starbucks. "We plan to present technology more like learning than surfing."
Meanwhile, the Apple Cafes, also scheduled to open next year, will use dumbed-down terminals with a touch-screen but no keyboard or mouse. Content will tilt toward entertainment and be Net Nanny-ed to prevent porn surfing. The Apple Cafes expect a third of their revenue to come from sales of Apple products or merchandise bearing its logo.
"We're creating a cyber cafe for the rest of us," says Jon Holtzman, director of Apple's world wide brand marketing. "What we're really doing is a cyber cafe meets Planet Hollywood."
Apple's venture follows in the footsteps of Cybersmith, a cyber cafe chain that feels like a cross between an arcade, a coffee shop, and Egghead Software.
Even as the big boys dream big dreams, the older cyber cafes are having a hard time establishing computers as a draw. In New York City, @Cafe and the Kokobar recently shut down the technology side of their businesses and reopened as plain old cafe/bars. A visit to three coffee-and-computer cafes in San Francisco found them to be virtually empty.
In fact, owners of small cyber cafes are hoping the entrance of the larger chains into the fray will give them a lift. "They're giving us free publicity," said Edward Perry, owner of San Francisco's Cyber World.
