Richa Bansal, a PR professional, was “group interviewed” at Perch, Khan Market, early this year. “I somehow felt less tense even though I knew I was under scrutiny. My boss later told me that he wanted to observe our social and team skills but not in an office environment,” says Bansal. According to a Bloomberg 2021 report based on a survey conducted by the Boston Consulting Group, companies continued to operate remotely or through hybrid work options even after the pandemic. A more recent report by the same group in 2023, confirmed that companies have generated more revenue from the remote work mode. It’s a win-win for both employers and office-goers.
Remote work options allow companies to grow without having to spend much on office space, while employees, too, have flexibility in working hours. This has allowed many to look for designated co-working spaces near their homes to save travel time while also being able to take a pause from work and socialise with others in those spaces. This has also led to a transformation of cafés into co-working spaces, starting a new trend of work cafés.
No interruptions
A hybrid lifestyle begins early these days. Sanya Mehta Goyal, a 24-year-old legal associate at SquadStack, began working from cafés in 2021, when universities were still in hybrid mode. “During the pandemic, going to cafés served as a much-needed escape from the confines of home. After the second wave in 2021, as cafés gradually reopened, it became a means to break the monotony induced by online internships and lockdowns,” she says.
For her, Khan Market’s Blue Tokai became the go-to space, and she continues going there to work. It is a space she finds comforting because it does not play loud music, which helps her focus on her work. “In a café, once you get a good seat, you are good to go. You can just scan the menu and order your food without even getting up. Being seated in one place, with good Wi-Fi, without any distraction of going to the counter to order, gets the work done without any interruption,” she says.
Work dates
Goyal also says that the café’s low buzz helps one concentrate. Complete silence would have been unsettling, she says. Goyal’s office initially worked on a ‘remote first’ mode when the pandemic raged, then allowing staff to continue working from a café for two days a week, as the situation eased. Now that it has moved back to a ‘work from office’ mode, yet she manages to visit her favourite “work café” when tasks spill over into the weekends – the reason being the comfortable work environment.
“My husband and I have developed a routine of heading to Blue Tokai in Khan during weekends, turning work into a social affair. For us, working together has become our love language, and going to a café serves as our version of a date,” she says.
Matt Chitharanjan, co-founder of Blue Tokai, says that when the cafe was initially launched in 2013, the idea was not to design it as a work café. However, with the pandemic changing the office landscape, entrepreneurs, who wanted to ride the trend, did so. Blue Tokai, for instance, went through a redesign and opened a total of 95 outlets in India.
“The café seating has been designed to cater to people coming to work, who choose a corner spot, with charging points and high-speed wi-fi. People are looking for an environment that fosters their creative process, and so our café offerings are curated to suit anyone spending between 30 minutes to even a couple of hours or more,” he says.
Akash Chauhan, HR Head at Chaayos, also says that for many these outlets have evolved as alternative work spaces, they “introduced scan and order for least interruption, bigger tables and plush seats for comfortable seatings for longer duration and revamped the interiors to ensure that it is not distracting”.
“High-speed wi-fi is a must for working out of the café,” says Srijit S Madhavan, 26, a front-end lead at Blue Sky Analytics. Working from cafés fosters “a better work environment as it allows you to interact with people from different walks of life, whereas working from the office could be too monotonous”, he says. His way of dealing with ambient noise? Noise-cancelling headphones.
For Atul Jain, a 28-year-old software developer at Chartr, cafes have an additional benefit; they are even better than working out of the home. “When I work from home, and if something happens at home, I will have to attend to that, I cannot ignore it, but when I work from cafés, I have the option of avoiding things around me,” he says. His office has a flexi-working schedule so he makes sure to work from a café at least once a week.
Freelancers’ haven
Chaayos at Gurugram is the haunt of Faizi Khan, a 34-year-old writer and storyteller. “Cafés help me to stay connected with people, it helps me to observe people, know the ongoing food trends, topics of conversation, and clothing, all of which I incorporate in my stories,” says Khan.
In 2019, she published her book Urooj, a collection inspired by the individuals she encountered in cafés. “Once a barista, curious about a story I was reading to my friend, discovered that I’m a writer. He told me that he writes too. Ever since, he has been sharing his poetry with me,” says Khan.
For Adheesh Verma, 43, a freelance writer, Starbucks is his “most creative zone”. The screenplay and script for the TV series SSC (2023), or lyrics for the songs ‘Meer-E-Karwaan’ from Lucknow Central (2017) or ‘Tashreef’ from Bank Chor (2017) were all born in the café.
“It might seem counterproductive, but cafés actually allow you to focus better on your work. The noise, after a point, becomes white noise, you notice it, but it does not distract you. It rather soothes you,” says Verma. For him, cafes offer a lot, on some days it is an inspiration for a character, and on other days, it means a new song buzzing in his head.