As many service providers know, it can often be more lucrative to charge by the hour, rather than quoting up front for a job.

What if the job overruns?

Is more complicated than we think?

Suffers delays?

We have to absorb the costs.

In some industries   such as the legal profession   it is accepted that work is often paid on a time-incurred basis.

However, this is not really what we associate with coffee, is it?

Daria Volkovo has made a rather unusual business decision in structuring how her customers are to pay for their coffee.

What is it?

She has decided that her customers will be charged according to the length of time they spend in her cafe, rather than by the more traditional method of charging them for the items they order.

This caff is called Slow Times and is located in Wiesbaden in Germany.

Why the novel idea?

Apparently the owner was inspired by cafes in Ms Volkovo’s home nation of Russia.

She charges $0.04 per minute (which is about $5.18 per hour) for customers to sit in her caff.

In addition, the clocks in the cafe are set to different times so that the customers’ attention is redirected from the clock to being sociable with other customers and their environment.

Would you like this model?

How could the cafe owner make sure that she made a profit during the long visits by consumers who have healthy appetites?

It is interesting to think, however, how much people would be prepared to pay for a good atmosphere (coffee shops are often seen as being community hubs) and many indirectly pay for the environment when they pay for meals and drinks in stunning locations.

What do you think?