The seat
A named zone, held until you arrive
Not “a table somewhere”. You book Zone B, the window bar, and it is yours for the session — so you do not walk in to a full room after a twenty-minute tram.
Phase 0 · one neighbourhood at a time
Book the room,
not the risk.
A named seat in a café, bar or hotel lobby — from €7 a half day. You see the Wi-Fi speed someone actually measured in that room, and the seat is held for you when you turn up.
Lisbon first. We open one neighbourhood at a time, and the search covers the ones that are open.
Example session
Cortiço Courtyard
Window bar, Zone B
09:00–13:00 · half day
- Power at seatOwner claimed
- Calls welcomeOwner claimed
- Wi-Fi62↓ 18↑ Mbps Verified
What you actually get when you book
Three things a café cannot promise you over the phone, and Perchoir can.
The plug
Power, listed before you pay
Every seat says whether it has a socket. If nobody has checked, it says that too.
The Wi-Fi
A speed someone measured, in that room
Not the number on the router box. A real test, run at a real seat, shown with its date and how many readings it rests on.
The rules
Calls, and how long you can stay
Whether you can take a call, and where. How long the seat is yours. Agreed up front, so nobody has to have the awkward conversation at 2pm.
Rooms by kind
The quiet hours in places that already have chairs, power and someone behind a counter.
The Wi-Fi speed is measured, not promised
Venues cannot type in their own Wi-Fi speed. Every figure on Perchoir comes from a real speed test run by someone working in that room, and it is shown with its date and sample count.
| Signal | Claimed by venue | Measured on site |
|---|---|---|
| Download | Fibre, unverified | 47 Mbps |
| Upload | — | 16 Mbps |
| Latency | — | 22 ms |
| Confidence | — | 6 readings, 3 days old |
| Status | Unverified | Verified |
If nobody has tested the Wi-Fi in 45 days, the verified mark comes off until someone does. Illustrative example — Phase 0 recruits its first venues before any of this is measured for real.
If you run the room
There is a whole other half of this argument — the one about what the empty hours between rushes are actually worth. It has its own reading of this page.
Where we are up to
A handful of venues in a few Lisbon neighbourhoods, and nowhere else yet. Every room you can see is a real room with a real seat in it — if your neighbourhood returns nothing, that is the coverage being honest rather than the search being broken.
For venues · Phase 0 · one neighbourhood at a time
Sell the hours
you give away.
Between 14:00 and 18:00 your room is a fifth full and the staff are already paid for. Perchoir fills those seats with people who book ahead, pay before they arrive, and are gone before service.
No listing fee, no monthly cost, no software to install. Perchoir takes a commission only when a seat actually sells.
Rooms like
Your day, your call
You declare the windows
A window set to zero seats is a first-class setting, not a workaround. The rush is never bookable.
- 12:00–14:00 — 0 seats. The lunch rush stays yours.
- 14:00–18:00 — 6 seats released into the dead window.
Nobody here thinks you owe laptop workers a table
Venues have two complaints about them, and both are correct. Perchoir is built around the complaints rather than against them.
The rush
One person, a four-top, three hours, one espresso
That is a real loss and it is why the “no laptops 12–2” signs exist. So Perchoir never sells your peak. You declare which windows release seats; the rest of the day is not bookable at any price, and a zero-capacity lunch is a setting, not a hack.
The spend
They arrive having already paid
The session is bought before anyone sits down. Minimum spend stops being a conversation your staff have to start.
The counter
Ten seconds, on whatever tablet you own
Staff open one screen, read a code, tap once. No training, no new hardware, no navigation to get lost in mid-service.
The upkeep
Set once, then leave it alone
A weekly pattern per zone, overrides for holidays and private events, and one button that pauses same-day bookings when the room fills. Nothing that needs opening daily.
What a quiet window is worth
Put your own numbers in. This is multiplication, not a forecast — it assumes every seat you release actually sells, which it will not, especially at first. Halve it and it still beats an empty chair.
6
214
€7
€5€15
4
17
- Half-day seats released a week 24
- Session revenue €168
- Perchoir commission, illustrative 17% −€29
- Margin on redeemed drink credits €66
- Roughly, a week
Commission is 15–20% of the session price depending on the plan; 17% is used here as a mid-point. Credit margin assumes one drink credit redeemed per session — see the line below. None of this counts what a person buys beyond their credit, which is where the actual money has always been.
What a €4.50 coffee actually costs you
Subscribers arrive with drink credits they paid for months ago. You are not giving anything away — Perchoir buys the coffee off you at a wholesale rate, in a window where the seat was empty and the staff were already on the clock.
| Line | Who pays | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Drink credit face value, capped | The nomad, months ago | €4.50 |
| Perchoir reimburses you, wholesale | Perchoir, weekly transfer | €3.15 |
| Your marginal cost in a dead window | You | ≈ €0.40 |
| You net, on the drink alone | — | ≈ €2.75 |
| Plus the session fee, plus anything else ordered | — | Yours, in full |
Wholesale rate shown illustratively at 70% of the capped face value. You choose which items a credit covers, and meal credits can be blacked out during service. Figures are worked examples for Phase 0, not a rate card.
Ten minutes a week, and that is the design brief
Three screens, and only one of them is for you. The other two are for whoever is on the floor.
We tell you which €30 fix converts
Every search that filtered you out is a fact we have and you do not. Once a month we hand it back, ranked, with the reason attached — so you can decide whether a power strip is worth buying.
It is the only part of the dashboard designed to make you open it.
Lost demand · last 30 days
Illustrative
31 searches in your area excluded you.
- No power at seats14
- No outdoor seating9
- Wi-Fi still unverified8
Cheapest fix first. Two power strips on the mezzanine clears the largest of these. We will not tell you it guarantees a booking.
What we will hold you to
If you accept a guaranteed booking and cannot seat the person, they are refunded in full and you are charged a €15 penalty; your honor rate drops, and 3 failures in 90 days suspends your guarantees. We are telling you this before you sign up rather than after, because the same schedule runs in the other direction — a nomad who no-shows loses the session and their guarantee eligibility on identical terms. A one-sided penalty regime would just lose us the venues.
Phase 0 is still small — a handful of venues in a few Lisbon neighbourhoods — and every listing is reviewed by a person within 24 hours before it goes live. Setting yours up does not put it in front of anyone until that read has happened.
Find the room you did not know was open.
Lisbon is open now. Pick a neighbourhood and a window, and see which rooms have a seat left in it.