As Lloyds looks to tie bonuses to office attendance and TfL considers free coffee incentives for commuters, there’s another factor which may start driving digital nomads back to the office: coffee shops are throwing them out. 

Remote-working haven Starbucks yesterday announced it was abolishing its open-door policy in its North American cafes, which has allowed people to sit in stores and use the toilets without buying anything since 2018.

“We don’t want to become a public bathroom, but we’re going to make the right decision a hundred per cent of the time and give people the key,” Starbucks’ then-chairman Howard Schultz said at the time. The policy change followed a controversial incident involving the arrest of two black men, who had the police called on them by a Starbucks manager for occupying a table without purchasing anything. 

But with a new boss and flagging sales, the coffee shop is changing its tune. From 27 January, punters will have to buy something or leave as part of the chain’s new ‘coffeehouse code of conduct’, which Starbucks said had been changed to “ensure our spaces are prioritised for use by our customers”. It is as yet unclear whether the changes will also impact its UK stores. 

For a company which offered to support the 1,000-mile commute of its CEO with use of its own corporate jet, the move may be seen as stingy by some, but coffeeshop loiterers are increasingly being named as hospitality burdens.

The owner of Local Coffee & Grocery, an independent cafe in West Hampstead, last year told The Daily Mail he had made the decision to stop offering free wifi, after finding he was losing money due to seats occupied by non-lucrative laptop-users. Meanwhile many cafes have begun banning laptops on weekends or imposing time limits on tables.

So who knows, perhaps the office could become the number one place to work once again.