Today, finding a free Wi-Fi connection to the Web isn't that hard. A park, a mall, a coffee shop, a fast-food restaurant... to a greater or lesser extent, there's usually a link available. However, the story was very different in 1998. In fact, very few people really knew what Internet or The Web was, but Burger King decided to get ahead of the future with a big bet: installing multiple PCs in its Broadway establishment to provide access to its customers…
We won't deny it: cyber cafés generate a lot of nostalgia. While there are regions that still depend on them (the Pisonets of Manila come to mind), in general, talking about cyber cafés takes us back to an era of CRT monitors, the smell of tobacco, mice and keyboards with their own lives, endless Winamp playlists, long late-night sessions, digital romances... and more. But it all started somewhere. Many arrows point to Cyberia, the first cyber café in London, which opened its doors in September 1994. Other sources say that The Binary Café (the first in Canada) started its activity in June of that same year, and to find the first proto-cyber, you need to explore the PC bang of South Korea. However, in July 1998, cyber cafés found an unusual ally: Burger King.
A Whopper and 20 Minutes: Free Internet from Burger King in 1998
A handful of images on the Web and an archived New York Times article confirm that Peter Allen Abramson, owner of the Burger King at 182 Broadway Street in New York, decided to install a total of twenty computers, and grant 20 minutes of access with a minimum purchase of $4.99 (or $3.29 during breakfast hours). Cheryl Mitchell, spokesperson for Burger King and the National Franchisee Association, added that this Burger King was the first in the entire chain to do something like this, and the first cyber-burger space.
The system ran on a single server, and each of the terminals, all Compaq (they appear to be DeskPro EN models with a special front), used Intel Pentium II 266 MHz processors, and 32 MB of RAM. As for link speed, the article mentions a T1 line of 1.5 megabits (in 1998, that was lightning). Obviously, the system also had some traffic control: No betting, and no sex..
No one seems to know how long this initiative lasted, and that Burger King would close during the pandemic... but something new and different began there in 1998, no doubt.
Sources: The New York Times, Vintage Everyday
