@tzhongg hey Tiffany! For the past three years or so, I’ve been working out of coffee chains. I only did this because all my friends were too. It wasn’t until recently that I started getting really frustrated about the service and environment (long queues, dirty tables, dated music, uncomfortable seating etc). Having a background in web and app development, I began to question why many of these frustrations could not be solved with technology. We’ve invented a beautifully-designed and intelligent smartphone app which allows you to order in advance, therefore cutting the long queues and oversized bar area; often the greatest cause of noise you’ll hear in a coffee shop. In any ordinary cafe, there would be members of staff taking orders. We will instead give these people the task of ensuring our lounge is clean and tidy. I teamed up with my 15-year-old co-founder and a board of epic advisors to build this and we're really excited to have launched our Kickstarter!
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@jsa this looks REALLY interesting. What are your thoughts on doing these in other countries? (eg: Sweden, which has a massive cafe culture, but real lack of places to work from and collaborate in this kind of way)
@jasondainter hey Jason! Glad you're as excited as we are. There are certainly plans to launch in other locations once our first store in Central London opens. If you back us on Kickstarter, you're indirectly helping us launch additional stores after our first, if it's as successful as we imagine it to be!
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hey @jsa, in theory, how long will it take for clients to find and download your app from inside the lounge, and will it be sufficiently fast for walk-ins to not get bored and go to the Starbucks across the street ?
Or are you angling this more towards coworking types ? If so, how do you plan to compete with existing spaces ? Only via price difference ?
@_arnauds_ hey! We'll have mini devices which you can plug into the headphone jack where our our page in the App Store (for iPhone) will automatically open, all ready for you to download the app. For other devices we'll have a short url or QR code for you to use. It should realistically take 60 seconds to download and sign up - we've made it as simple as possible to enter in your details (including payment method, where you scan your card). If you don't have a spare 60 seconds to download and sign up, you can order on one of the in-store iPads yourself or ask a member of our onboarding team to help you.
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@jsa Cool idea :) Not afraid people will either forget or steal the little devices ?
Also, how are you going to guarantee things like noise levels ?
@_arnauds_ There will be members of staff helping with the onboarding experience and supervising customers to make sure there's enough of these little devices for everybody! After chatting to our developer about this, I discovered that they're also ridiculously cheap so we shouldn't have too much of a problem if a couple did accidentally go missing.
We can't guarantee that things like noise level will always be perfect of course, but we can certainly try to make a change. For starters, because of our layout (we don't have a bar area at the front of the store, instead it is towards the back although still visible) you shouldn't hear the sounds of the coffee machines nearly as much. We are also encouraging people to speak at a regular volume by having slightly quieter music. Most coffee chains currently assume loud music will drown out noise, but it doesn't - it makes people speak louder to be heard over it. In addition to this, although families are welcome to visit our lounges, we suspect that many will go to cafes/restaurants which have microwaves, high-chairs, baby-changing equipment etc - all of which we won't have, because we're building this for a very specific target audience.
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WeWork apparently recently raised at a $5 billion valuation. There is a lot of room for WeWok like concepts, in America and worldwide.
Will there be any kind of membership like component, or is the business model strictly "retail".
I'm not in love with the name, honestly.... but great market, looks like you are on your way. Good luck!
@JeremyZ123 hey Jeremy! Thanks for the comments and kind words. We're currently keeping our lounges easily accessible to everybody who wants to make use of them, although we like to keep our options open :) Would be awesome if you could pledge on our Kickstarter to support us if you haven't already.
@JeremyZ123 Hi Jeremy! We're really excited about the future of the high street and beyond, things are looking interesting in this field. Space Lounges is a retail space open to everyone, the only membership-like component is the mobile app; the app is available for free for everybody. There's no membership fee at all, but a far better experience, something we're proud to be focusing on. Thanks for the feedback! :)
@corey_gwin hey Corey! Glad you like the app. We are building a physical retail store (hence 'space' and 'lounges') though too :) Take a look at our kickstarter for more info: http://pledge.spacelounges.com
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