Try a Coffee Shop

Jessica Clark reports on a bizarre new trend sweeping the ranks of those lacking traditional office arrangements:

For $25 a day (or $175 a month for a 3 day/week commitment), you can drop into the space, use the wireless, meet with clients in the small glassed-in conference room, and, often, find folks to grab a drink with afterward. The feel is part dorm lounge, part ad agency and part cybercafe, and it's a hit.

Kay Steiger from whom I got the link seems to think this is a good idea. But why not just do what everyone I know in DC does when they need a neither-office-nor-home place to work and . . . go to a coffee shop (or "cybercafe")? If there isn't a good free wifi hotspot in your neighborhood, you could always just sign up for a T-Mobile account for $40 a month (or, even better, $360 a year) and go to your local Starbucks or Borders. Or get AT&T for $20 a month and use it at McDonalds or Barnes & Noble. Indeed, you could easily get both for less than $125 a month.

Photo by Flickr user dnorton used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

This isn't new, it's been around since the late 90s / dot com bubble era. Rent a cubicle, and if you have a meeting pay extra to reserve the conference room that day. The Wi-fi coffee house is a newer phenomenon, however.

Posted by SP | October 2, 2007 8:59 AM

Good lord, 'product placement' has apparently come to Matt's blog with a vengeance.

Posted by Ryan | October 2, 2007 9:05 AM

It's for part-time lawyers who do wills, trusts and that kind of thing. You don't want to go over your will in a coffee shop.

Posted by stm177 | October 2, 2007 9:26 AM

Starbucks has a "small glassed-in conference room"? Does it have a copy machine too?

Posted by ostap | October 2, 2007 9:43 AM

Is this east-coast lingo?

Out here a "coffee shop" is a diner like Denny's, a "coffee house" is a place that serves only coffee and muffins, like Starbucks.

Posted by westerner | October 2, 2007 9:56 AM

Also, lets not forget Panera Bread, where Wi-Fi is completely free and the food is way better.

I owe them thanks for the writing of my thesis.

Posted by magnoliasitter | October 2, 2007 10:09 AM

As stm and ostap point out, Starbucks/McDonalds/Panera are all fine if you are working on writing/research/whatnot, but less than ideal if you are actually transacting business. The presence of a private conference room, possibly minor office equipment and a permanent address is a good thing for lots of people who have real, individual clients. Unless you've found a Starbucks that lets you use their backroom, privately, on request and accepts deliveries for you. Oh, and will stay open all night, if that's when you become productive.

Posted by zaleriana | October 2, 2007 10:25 AM

Yeah its the business meetings in Starbucks that don't work so well. I mean its one thing to meet a colleague to chat about a project, but I've often seen people being interviewed for jobs at Starbucks (and not FOR Starbucks), which looks so shady.

From what I gather from eavesdropping, its usually for something along the lines of a multilevel marketing racket selling knives door to door.

Posted by beowulf | October 2, 2007 10:47 AM

The above objections notwithstanding, instead of paying $40/month and being limited to Starbucks, you could pay $60/month for a USB modem and go just about anywhere you damn please.

Well, anywhere they'll let you in.

Posted by Swopa | October 2, 2007 10:49 AM

I've never seen a Starbucks with a sign like that. Where is it?

Or -- is that the original one in Seattle? I happened to walk by it last time I was there but wouldn't have been in a physical position to see the big sign on top.

That original Starbucks is actually pretty charming, too bad they couldn't have left well enough alone.

Posted by live | October 2, 2007 11:14 AM

Actually, this was how business was done in 18th century London. Merchants would gather at coffee shops where, besides generally socializing, they would also conduct business.

Eventually, certain coffee shops became specialized - associated with certain specific activities. And business conducted within them became more and more formalized. Eventually both the stock exchange and the insurance business grew out of this early coffee ship milieu.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | October 2, 2007 11:26 AM

New trend? LOL.

These sorts of services have been around forever. Well, at least as long as multi-tenant office buildings.

Posted by Emma Zahn | October 2, 2007 11:39 AM

I dunno this sounds sorta like the office arrangements I had when I was a paralegal in DC. Solo and small practicioners shared communal space like conference rooms, copy rooms, lobby, etc, but each had their own 'office'. Worked pretty well and for a fraction of what Winston & Strawn paid for their building on the corner.

Posted by Civilized Crank | October 2, 2007 11:41 AM

There are just some times you need to meet in a professional environment--a Starbucks meeting is great if there are only two of you and you can huddle around a laptop, and you might be able to use your living room in a pinch for your own project team. But an important meeting with a moderate number of attendees (especially if some are clients) calls for an actual conference room. For the extra price, you get a guarantee of an A/V setup, seating for everybody, controlled lighting and temperature, and quiet and privacy. That's a no-brainer for a business with no physical facilities.

Posted by Mike B. | October 2, 2007 11:52 AM

There's a huge locally-owned coffee shop here in Madison, WI called escape. It's a converted garage so it has a bunch of big sprawling rooms. One's a library with old paperbacks on the walls, one's a business style conference room, one's like a lving room, one has cafe tables, one's full of kid's toys. Wi-Fi throughout. It's like they tried to replicate as many home, school, and office spaces as they could think of.

Posted by Justin K. | October 2, 2007 12:47 PM

The main problem with the coffee shop is, what do you do with your laptop while you pee?

Posted by Jon H | October 2, 2007 1:36 PM

You can't exactly have a real business meeting in a coffee shop -- I mean, you can have some of them there, but if you want to look like a real professional, you can't have all of them there. You also can't have any sort of meeting with a bunch of people, the kind of thing you'd need that conference room for. Usually the coffeeshops near my house have 2 or 3 seats available, maybe a tiny little table. It's OK for solitary work, but there are certainly times you'd want an office. Plus, the coffee shop is full of hipster doofi who need to get punched in the face, and I can't always work around them.

Posted by too many steves | October 2, 2007 4:05 PM

"Actually, this was how business was done in 18th century London. Merchants would gather at coffee shops where, besides generally socializing, they would also conduct business."

Edward Lloyd's coffee house was probably the most famous - Lloyd's of London. I believe the practice went back to ~1500 in the Ottoman Empire.

Posted by Njorl | October 2, 2007 5:24 PM

Is it my imagination or is that a photo of the original Harbucks?

I'm not entirely unappreciative of their coffee (I drink it during the week) but Peets makes better coffee and the best espresso in the country is at Vivace in Seattle (on Denny and Broadway). The nico is delicious.

Posted by Linus | October 2, 2007 6:39 PM

Business meeting in a coffeeshop? Doesn't work so well in Amsterdam, as contracts are non-binding if the parties are incapacitated. :)

Posted by Vermando | October 2, 2007 11:33 PM