New business models

The London ‘Anti-Cafe’ Where Everything Is Free But You Pay 5 Cents A Minute Just To Be There

Next time you’re in London, you could walk into the Ziferblat cafe in the fashionable Shoreditch neighborhood and grab a coffee. Perhaps you might sit down on one of the comfortable armchairs, pull out your laptop and check your emails on the Wi-Fi network. Feeling a little hungry? There’s some food in the cabinet; help yourself.

How much does all this cost? Well, if you spend, say, 45 minutes there, it will cost you £1.35 (approximately $2.20).

You see, Ziferblat might look like a traditional cafe or a coffee shop, but it’s not. It’s an “anti-cafe.” Customers are welcome to come in and do whatever they like with the facilities, as long as they pay 3 pence (5 cents) per minute while they’re there. So far, Londoners seem excited by the news — Time Out marveled at a raw onion in the pantry (to cook with, if you wish), while the Guardian wondered if having a piano in the cafe was a great idea, or a terrible one.

London is the first branch of Ziferblat outside of Russia and Ukraine. Opening such a cafe in one of the world’s most notoriously expensive cities (and in its hippest neighborhood) may seem to be inviting disaster, but Mitin says that is the point: It’s a challenge. “If Ziferblat succeeds in London then it would mean that we can open it anywhere because it would be cheaper,” he says, also explaining that his literary background and love of writers such as Lewis Carroll, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and C.S. Lewis, led him to the U.K.

Read more at the Business Insider