Are pay-per-minute cafes the next generation of coworking spaces?.
Cincinnati has seen its ups and downs with coworking spaces, including our favorite but now closed Cincy Coworks in Walnut Hills. The idea was and still is great – especially for the growing number of freelance or independent professionals who would like a space to work that isn’t either their living room couch or a congested coffee shop. Well this new company out of Russian has a slight twist on the traditional coworking space, if you can call coworking spaces traditional. What they do is operate a bit like a coworking space and a bit like a café, but instead of charging monthly memberships or for the latte; they charge users for occupying the space. More from Grist:
Ziferblat, a Russian company that just opened its first branch in London, works on an unusual premise: It charges you for the time you spend in its space, rather than what you consume there…The charge for the space is 3 pence (about 5 cents) per minute, and it works out to about the same rate you’d pay in a coffee shop, if you bought a small item for every hour to 90 minutes you linger. But it’s your choice — do you actually need a fancy latte? Do you want a sandwich? If you’re not hungry or caffeine-deprived and you just want a space to work or hang out — well, that’s all that’s required here. It’s sort of like a private park, but inside and with couches and free coffee.