NEW YORK CITY – Some coffeehouses in New York City are embracing disconnection by eschewing Wi-Fi or prohibiting laptop usage, Wall Street Journal reports. What happens instead is that people start to connect with each other, face to face.

“There’s Wi-Fi in the subway. There’s Wi-Fi everywhere,” said Jeremy Lyman, co-owner of the eight-location Birch Coffee. “Why not use our space as an opportunity to disconnect and connect to someone sitting next to you?”

Some stores pick the middle ground by disconnecting Wi-Fi during the evening and on weekends, but others, like Birch, ditch the Wi-Fi completely. “When you walk into our store, there’s a few laptops, but nothing close to how many there were. There’s people talking. It’s such a beautiful thing,” Lyman said.

Meanwhile, over at Café Grumpy, which also has eight stores, laptops have been banned in several locations. “People were camping out at tables. People couldn’t chat with their friends,” said co-owner and chief executive Caroline Bell, who added that those shops now feel “more fun, more interactive, more like New York City.”