I’m currently sitting outside a shop called Whole Foods Market in Austin, TX. It’s kinda like the Selfridges Food Hall and I just ate a bowl of salad at £7.99 / lb. I was thinking we’d have to go back to the SXSW event over the road for Wifi but Whole Foods have not one, not two, but three wifi networks. And they’re free.
Did I mention I’m sitting outside? So this is technically municipal wifi for the city to use? And it’s free?
The only catch is when you connect and open a web page you’re shown an advert for Wholefoods. This works on the same principle as paid-for wifi networks but you don’t have to sign in. You just have to look at it and move on. So they get advertising and I get free wifi. Which I’m using to blog this.
We need this in Birmingham.
There’s a Whole Foods Market somewhere in London now, and I think they have plans to take over the UK. No idea about the wi-fi tho.
I’m not usually happy about global domination of brands but in this case I welcome our new healthy food overlords.