third place – UrbanCincy

How the prevalence of independent coffee shops is a reflection of where we live

How the prevalence of independent coffee shops are a reflection of where we live.

I love coffee and I especially love coffee shops. I find them to be a productive and relaxing third place in my life where I can also benefit from chance social encounters that are otherwise impossible from the comforts of your couch. Not to mention, good coffee (black) is absolutely delicious.

But so many people around the world get their coffee from big chain retailers. What does that mean for our neighborhood business districts, and what does it say about our communities if they are filled with only national chains, local chains or some sort of mixture? More from the Washington Post along with some great maps produced by MIT:

Coffee shops are unlike other community assets in that they enable us to mingle with strangers in ways that we might not in restaurants, to meet a wider range of people than we would in a bar, to linger in ways that we don’t at the grocery store, or to people-watch with an ease that would be awkward almost anywhere else. That’s not to say that coffee shops are the only places that potentially create such community (nor that they serve this function in all communities). But if high-end restaurants and organic groceries are signs of areas with a lot of literal capital, independent coffee shops are one plausible indicator of social capital.

Are pay-per-minute cafes the next generation of coworking spaces?

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.