As rent prices increase, I can imagine it’s the only possibility. Merchant A calculated they can earn $x from y customers in a hours, so they can afford rent accordingly. Merchant B calculates they can earn more than $x by increasing the number of customers, therefore merchant B offers to pay a higher rent. Now they have to make sure sufficient customers (or sufficient revenue per customer per hour) is being met to afford the rent.

Only solution would be to move to a place with lower rents, I think. Or start explicitly paying rent for your table at the cafe per unit of time, but that might be unsavory to most people.