As I've mentioned before, I'm in the process of planning my wedding and many of the wedding vendors do not have office spaces of their own.  Instead, they offer to meet at coffee shops or cafes where we can discuss wedding plans and contracts at our leisure.  After Meeting with five different photographers at five different eating establishes in the past two weeks, I noticed another interesting trend.  Not everyone ordered something while we were there.

I'm fairly tight fisted, and I almost never go places like Starbucks for coffee.  It's just not where I want to be spending my money.  On the other hand, my fiance and I both feel pretty strongly that if you are going to go into a coffee shop and take up seating, you need to be a paying customer.  That goes doubly if you are also going to be making use of their wi-fi.  If you're using their place of business as your place of business, it goes triple.  I found it kind of shocking the first time we met with a photographer who didn't buy anything, but they weren't the first, and there was an interesting correlation between whether they bought food and how well we liked them as photographers:

1. The first photographer had bought a pastry and juice.  His photography was amazing and we loved his personality.  He was staying at the cafe after our meeting to meet with other clients, and mentioned needing to buy something else to feel comfortable staying.
2. The second photographer did not buy anything.  He also showed up late, had mediocre photos, and didn't give a very good sales pitch.
3. Our third meeting was with a team of two photographers.  Neither ordered anything.  We liked their personalities and thought the working relationship would be good, but their photography was only so-so and they used some weird post processing styles that we didn't particularly like.
4. At the fourth meeting the photographer didn't buy any food for herself, but had brought her teenaged daughter and bought food for her.  Her photography was good, but not excellent, and we thought she would be good to work with.  
5. The fifth photographer did buy coffee.  His photography was really good, and he had an excellent personality.  

I don't think that whether they bought food determined their skill (or vice versa), but I do think it says something about how they approach business and give some insight into their working relationships.  It's possible that some of them saw that we had already bought coffee and decided that the table was covered by that, but that still seems wrong to me. 

What do you think?  Do you feel obligated to buy something if you take up a seat in a cafe and use their internet?  If you met someone in a cafe to discuss a potential business relationship, would your decision be impacted by whether or not they purchased something?  Are my fiance and I crazy for even noticing?