Cyber cafés are springing up like mushrooms all over the planet. If you don’t think so, the Yahoo! search engine currently lists 19 directories of cyber cafés, including USA (with 81), Mexico (17), South America (11), Central America (13), and the only cyber café in the Caribbean, according to the Directory of Cyber Cafés in the Americas, is in the Dominican Republic, one of the poorer nations in that area. In addition to the directories, Yahoo! lists a few hundred individual links to cyber cafés with Web pages in all parts of the world. There are probably twice as many more which don’t have Web pages.

And Europe has hundreds more than there are in the whole western hemisphere! The Complete List of Cyber Cafés in Europe offers a very fancy Web site with directories of cyber cafés in all parts of Europe. This database lists hundreds of cyber cafés with their own Web pages; 87 in England, 11 in Scotland, 86 in France, and over 120 in Germany. No one knows how many there are in total, but at the rate they’re spreading, there should be one within walking distance from your house any day now.

Just to imagine the growth, in the European directory above, there were 27 new entries during the month of November, and the month wasn’t over at the time of this writing! If you’re traveling in Europe, check their Web site to see where you can check your email or drop in on your favorite chat room, in the cities you’ll be visiting.

So, what’s causing this explosive growth in cyber cafés? Why are they more popular in Europe? With a few PCs and an Internet connection, the typical cyber café is a place where, for a small fee, you can browse the World Wide Web or check your email. The café part? That can range from incidental coffee to a real restaurant. It appears that the successful cyber café will have to offer more than just Internet access to attract customers. So what is it that starts the buzz and causes friends of friends to patronize this new kind of establishment?

The great unconnected public’s growing interest in the Internet is supposed to be the primary attraction. Get the word out, and they will come. Maybe, but not likely. It might be more important to provide a comfortable environment and cater to the social gathering instinct, although the attraction is still based on the idea that people come to a cyber café in order to become computer-literate. The successful cyber café will probably offer classroom instruction as a product to advertise and sell. This is perhaps as important as the Internet connection or the coffee. Many cafés also sell hardware, and they can construct a custom Pentium-powered clone to match your needs. Food and beverages will be an adjunct to these activities, but a good menu can be an attraction. On the other hand, if the food and atmosphere are just average, that will discourage regular attendance. Although the product is computers and the Internet, customer service is paramount.

A long-established European-style café in Liège, Belgium opened a digital annex in 1995. The Café Le Pot au Lait traces its name to the 12^th century and has been known for almost that long as a hangout for students from the nearby university. The cyber annex is called Cybercafé Le Pot au Lait. Cyber cafés have become so popular in the Netherlands that "Internet phone booths" have been installed on the streets in Amsterdam, near the Van Gogh Museum and the Central (train) Station. They cost 0.25 francs for two minutes online. Currently you can use them for Web access or sending email, but not receiving email. You will need a telephone credit card to use them.

Some digital hipsters have opened a nightclub in Brussels (Belgium), dedicated to the more theatrical aspects of the Internet. It’s not quite a year since their grand opening, and they are now looking to hire a commercial director and expand their business into a global franchise. Dreamjobs listed this position just recently. If you have global-franchising experience, and you’re fluent in French and English, you might want to apply.

Café and Internet of America was the first cyber café in Miami, Florida (USA). They advertise on their Web site that you can surf the Internet; send or receive email; use your favorite word processor, spreadsheet or database; play CD-ROM games; or just chat while you sip various gourmet espressos and cappuccino. This cyber café is certainly a full-service interface to both computers and the Internet. They advertise that "anything you can possibly do on or with a computer, we do at Café and Internet of America." They have both Macintosh and Windows computers, digital cameras, scanners and color printers. You can bring your own computer to be upgraded, configured, or checked out. If you need a computer they will put it together for you. And if you need to learn how to use your computer, there are classes available. They had a party recently, to which all of their members were invited. The pictures from the party are posted on the Web site, for all to see the real-life images of the people they’ve only "met" online. This is not just a cyber café, it’s a cyber community.

The more basic services are outlined in the following online "menu" that happens to be from the Yupi Internet Café in Coral Springs, Florida (USA).

Not all the cyber cafés in USA are in Florida, of course. There’s the Café Cyberway in Ellsworth, Maine (USA), which is on the way to Bar Harbor and the Maine summer vacation areas.

In Southern California (USA), there’s The Gig, with locations in Cypress and Hollywood, while the Cyber Bar @ Rhino Room in Huntington Beach caters to cyber (and ocean) surfers. In Fullerton, a college town, there’s The Global Village, which offers basic services including email accounts for members.

If there isn’t a cyber café in your neighborhood, should you start one? There’s lots of help available (where else?) on the Internet. There is the International Association of Cybercafés, and there’s even an Espresso Success Newsletter for the newcomer to cappuccino and latte brewing. The investment? You could spend $10-15 thousand on espresso equipment, and a like amount to set up a small network to provide multiple Internet connections. Research your market carefully and prepare a business plan to chart the development of each part of the operation. And don’t forget—there are three things important to any retail business: location, location and location.

So where’s the best place to open a cyber café? Belgium, apparently. There seem to be more cyber cafés there, per capita, than anywhere else on the planet, at present. They also seem to thrive near universities, so it might be that an urban college town would be a better location than a strip mall in suburbia. Some of the most successful were already cafés; they just added a cyber annex. It’s probably essential to have someone with café management experience and another with computer and Internet experience. They will be two different jobs, each requiring expert management in order to be successful.