Have you heard about Ziferblat – London’s first pay as you go coffee shop?

Hello, I’m Sebastian.
Some may know me already as the founder of Conquer but I thought I’d say hi for once, and tell you about one of the more unusual coffee shop experiences i have had recently!

The concept: to encourage people to value the time they spend somewhere rather than just purely being another sale on their customer conveyor belt, being encouraged to drink up, buy more product or get out to make way for the next £ to come in! Lingering is not encouraged in our fast paced London life; indeed you could argue that it’s bad for business. This Russian born business model “cafe” has recently been introduced to Shoreditch!
Here at Conquer we love looking at different business models and intriguing concepts that could help reshape our world or just make for a more enjoyable experience. One thing I really can’t stand is the identikit chain stores, coffee shops and restaurants that seem to be taking over everywhere! There tends to be a touch of head-office about it all. Individual, tailored and personable service isn’t encouraged. Personality is taken away replaced by the same rehearsed spiel that smacks of a training manual.

Now I understand we all want to have good service that is polite, helpful, value for money and probably quick. But at what cost?

I have dietary requirements and have had the experience of people not understanding my needs and chains tend to be much hotter on having the ingredients listed on quick charts even when the staff have no clue what has been added as ingredients. But it still leaves me feeling hollow inside most of the time and frustrated at the lack of choice in their shrink wrapped range of mass produced drivel.

I was excited when I stumbled on this unique concept of coffee shop come social centre, a stone throw from our east London base of Spitalfields. I thought I’d organise the next meeting I had in different surroundings and give it a try! At 3p a minute I wasn’t looking at my watch constantly and when I finished my cup of tea there wasn’t a member of staff bussing my table to hurry me along. In fact I had a nice little joke when I got into a discussion with some staff members in the kitchen that they were trying to run up my bill by providing intelligent and interesting conversation!

If I had a little quibble it would be that the mounds of biscuits, bread and many other help yourself items in the kitchen were not on my gluten intolerant shopping list. This shouldn’t be a problem for most of you, but even this they have a solution for… of sorts. Anything but alcohol is welcomed from the outside world. You can bring your own food and have it your own way (have that Mc D’s). Making your food in the communal space, just like a hostel, won’t appeal to all of you, and some might say service is why they went out to a coffee shop in the first place.

But if you’re like me; self employed and working better away from home and around people, then a kitchen is a blessing where I can take my delicious leftovers from the day before and not eat them cold like I would have when working at Spitalfields market. Since a coffee machine and kitchen is unfortunately not supplied by the Spitalfields estate I often, as a consequence, run up quite the bill in the local restaurants, eager to take my money to supply me with an overpriced tea. For the same price I could have had 50 minutes at Ziferblat, eating nibbles and drinking a cuppa that is made exactly the way I like it.

WIFI is provided and next time I visit I plan on bringing some of my vinyl to pop on the communal record player. I might even get some work done!

BREAKING NEWS, the cafe is under threat of an eviction notice and needs your help: please have a look at their Kickstarter campaign > HERE <

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