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Unlimited drinks and snacks from your local coffee shop sound too good to be true, but Glasshour in Brooklyn offers just that.

Glasshour proudly dubs itself the “first pay per minute café in the U.S.” That’s right; customers don’t have to pay for their drinks, necessarily. They are paying for their time spent at the café instead.

According to Business Insider, customers check in and the time starts then. The first hour is always $6, which covers those who just want to pop in for a quick coffee to go. That way, Glasshour isn’t losing money on free coffees-to-go all the time.

The cost to stay and hang out is 10 cents per minute, but customers who stay for four hours or more pay a maximum fee of $24, meaning they can pretty much overindulge on coffee and granola bars without having to pay more than that.

As if coffee and snacks to your heart’s desire isn’t enough of a reason to want to hang out at this café, there’s more fun to be had. Glasshour offers an array of board and video games for guests to use to consume their time.

The Glasshour website even provides a calendar of game nights and events in which to partake. You can choose to show up for foosball tournaments, Monopoly night, or event “Board Game Night,” which I can only assume is a night in which you play several of the available games.

This metered system of charging customers based on time spent rather than coffees and snacks enjoyed isn’t entirely brand new. It debuted in 2010 in Moscow at a coffee chain called Ziferblat. Today, Ziferblat has 14 locations across Europe, proving its success. However, will it catch on in the United States?

It’s hard to tell, but most cities’ Starbucks are congested at the best of times. Maybe this metered idea will come in handy for dividing the crowd between those who go to a coffee shop to hang out, and those who just want to get their coffee and go. We’ll see!

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Unlimited drinks and snacks from your local coffee shop sound too good to be true, but Glasshour in Brooklyn offers just that.

Glasshour proudly dubs itself the “first pay per minute café in the U.S.” That’s right; customers don’t have to pay for their drinks, necessarily. They are paying for their time spent at the café instead.

According to Business Insider, customers check in and the time starts then. The first hour is always $6, which covers those who just want to pop in for a quick coffee to go. That way, Glasshour isn’t losing money on free coffees-to-go all the time.

The cost to stay and hang out is 10 cents per minute, but customers who stay for four hours or more pay a maximum fee of $24, meaning they can pretty much overindulge on coffee and granola bars without having to pay more than that.

As if coffee and snacks to your heart’s desire isn’t enough of a reason to want to hang out at this café, there’s more fun to be had. Glasshour offers an array of board and video games for guests to use to consume their time.

The Glasshour website even provides a calendar of game nights and events in which to partake. You can choose to show up for foosball tournaments, Monopoly night, or event “Board Game Night,” which I can only assume is a night in which you play several of the available games.

This metered system of charging customers based on time spent rather than coffees and snacks enjoyed isn’t entirely brand new. It debuted in 2010 in Moscow at a coffee chain called Ziferblat. Today, Ziferblat has 14 locations across Europe, proving its success. However, will it catch on in the United States?

It’s hard to tell, but most cities’ Starbucks are congested at the best of times. Maybe this metered idea will come in handy for dividing the crowd between those who go to a coffee shop to hang out, and those who just want to get their coffee and go. We’ll see!

This Coffee Shop's Menu Is Free! Well, Sort Of...

Unlimited drinks and snacks from your local coffee shop sound too good to be true, but Glasshour in Brooklyn offers just that.

Glasshour proudly dubs itself the “first pay per minute café in the U.S.” That’s right; customers don’t have to pay for their drinks, necessarily. They are paying for their time spent at the café instead.

According to Business Insider, customers check in and the time starts then. The first hour is always $6, which covers those who just want to pop in for a quick coffee to go. That way, Glasshour isn’t losing money on free coffees-to-go all the time.

The cost to stay and hang out is 10 cents per minute, but customers who stay for four hours or more pay a maximum fee of $24, meaning they can pretty much overindulge on coffee and granola bars without having to pay more than that.

As if coffee and snacks to your heart’s desire isn’t enough of a reason to want to hang out at this café, there’s more fun to be had. Glasshour offers an array of board and video games for guests to use to consume their time.

The Glasshour website even provides a calendar of game nights and events in which to partake. You can choose to show up for foosball tournaments, Monopoly night, or event “Board Game Night,” which I can only assume is a night in which you play several of the available games.

This metered system of charging customers based on time spent rather than coffees and snacks enjoyed isn’t entirely brand new. It debuted in 2010 in Moscow at a coffee chain called Ziferblat. Today, Ziferblat has 14 locations across Europe, proving its success. However, will it catch on in the United States?

It’s hard to tell, but most cities’ Starbucks are congested at the best of times. Maybe this metered idea will come in handy for dividing the crowd between those who go to a coffee shop to hang out, and those who just want to get their coffee and go. We’ll see!