Kindly, No Laptops or Tablets After 5PM
On a visit to Detroit last weekend, I stopped at Cafe Sous Terre, a speakeasy-style french cafe and bar in Midtown. There was a simple yet provocative sign on the door: “Kindly, No Laptops or Tablets After 5PM.”
In a recent piece for The Philadelphia Citizen, Why Cities Should Invest In “Second Places”, Diana Lind talks about the importance of the rapidly disappearing workspaces in our cities. You may be familiar with the term third places, those community spots that are not your home (the first place) or your office (the second place). These are our public parks, libraries, and plazas that are essential to supporting public social needs, offering a place where people can gather. Lind guides her readers to look more closely at the rapid disappearance of our traditional second places, writing that “ever since Covid caused many people to work remotely, there has been much discussion about the benefits of remote or hybrid work — the control and flexibility over one’s schedule (particularly for caregivers), the reduction in the amount of time spent commuting — but relatively little concern about what the loss of office life means beyond its economic impact on building landlords, public transportation, and downtown businesses.”
Her concerns are well supported. Considering US office vacancy rates are expected to hit 24% by 2026, I think we should be giving these second places more attention in our discussions in revitalizing downtowns. While those large office-based workforces have been decentralized and have embraced remote work, the individuals behind those jobs are still in our communities. These folks, and an ever-increasing population of internet-based entrepreneurs (the rate of small business applications are still exceeding pre-pandemic levels), need somewhere in their own cities to conduct business.
The obvious answer for many is to work from a local coffee shop, such as Cafe Sous Terre. However, selling a table for $5 a day (as Lind says) doesn’t pencil out for the business owner. Her observation aligns with what Starbucks and Biggby have decided - there’s more money in cutting your square footage and moving to pick-up/drive-thru only business models. Gone are the days of Howard Schultz telling Starbucks employees that “providing the world with a warm and welcoming third place may just be our most important role and responsibility”.
The owner that I chatted with had similar things to say - that no business can be built off of an 8 hour table ordering $3 of coffee. In many cases, work cafes are kept afloat by owner-operators working intense hours to cut costs, or the business model has to rely on the volume of to-go orders. Rather than settle for either of those options, they introduced a hybrid model through their “No Laptops After 5” signage.
Rather than deter remote workers, they’ve embraced them while setting their own boundaries to convert the space. The signage serves as an opportunity to convert the physical business space in the evenings, essentially saying, “from 8:00 to 5:00, you’re welcome to set up shop here - come 5:00, this is no longer an office.” These remote workers can grab coffee and a sandwich before settling in for the remainder of the business day. After 5:00, the cafe welcomes a more social evening crowd, relying on its kitchen and alcohol sales to generate the business’s revenue. From a financial standpoint, this change resulted in them moving “from red to black almost immediately.”
In Lind’s piece, she mentions the need for the public sector to better empower second places, leveraging the assets of local government and philanthropies to reconstruct these spaces in our communities. True neighborhood businesses, like Cafe Sous Terre, clearly see the value and the necessity in offering these in-person co-working spaces to the community. After all, from a profit perspective, they could probably just not open their doors until 5:00 PM, distancing themselves from that crowd entirely. Instead, they’ve developed a business plan that allows them to turn a profit while also providing a vital social and entrepreneurial function to their neighborhood. Innovation is what our small businesses do best - the public sector, recognizing that, can better partner and uplift these models to support better second spaces in our communities.