MAYFAIR HOUSE BLOG

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Why Cafés Make Great Offices

13Jan

Everyone has difficulty concentrated at home. A lot of people vouch for home offices, but they can often be lonely and isolating. Don’t get me wrong, some people may prefer that environment, but I am not one of them. As much as I love what I do, I find it necessary to create a clear divide between work and home to keep a balance. As a solution, I started doing a lot of work from cafes.

There are so many benefits to working from cafes than renting office space and working from home, and perhaps by the end of this article I can convince you to give it a go.

It’s Cheaper Than Office Space

The obvious benefits of cafes is pricing. There’s no monthly fee, and there’s no charge to use the Internet. It’s a massive win! Yes, most places will require you to buy a drink to sit in, but you were going to have a coffee anyway, weren’t you? Paying £3 for a small desk, power, and Internet is not a bad deal.

The majority of cafes will also have some sort of loyalty scheme, and we all know what that means: free caffeine.

It Separates Work from Home

A lot of people who work from home can often be distracted by other menial household chores or responsibilities. Also, moving from bed mode to work mode without leaving the building can be difficult. By using a cafe, you are subconsciously (and literally) shutting the door on home life, and moving into work mode. Although it’s not quite the same as an office, and is very public, it can be great for those who work traditionally or aren’t very much phone based. People don’t take too kindly to constant phone calls in coffee shops.

You Discover New Places

This, and the following point, is the most important one. Working in a creative field, I am often fuelled by novelty and inspiration. By proactively choosing new locations to work from, and becoming absorbed in novel environments and situations, I help keep my creativity. I discover new buildings, interesting takes on the traditional coffee shop, and can also intrinsically reflect on how I react to these new surroundings.

You Meet New People

Cafes have a constant flow of people, and often when they are busy people share tables. If you’re working a way and need a quick break, just joining someone for a chat can be a refreshing experience. It also helps to see the world from a different perspective, and you may even be able to run a few ideas by them.

Cafe Bustle can Improve Productivity

Have you heard the study about how the noise of a coffee shop can improve your productivity? A study published in 2012 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048#mobileBookmark) found that medium to low level ambient noise can improve abstract thinking and promote creativity. From this, websites like coffitivity were born, offering soundtracks recorded in coffee shops. But why settle? Go find a coffee shop.

Great for Meetings

unsplash-bonusWhether you are meeting a client or having a team meeting, many cafes will have large tables dedicated to bugger groups that can work great for meetings. I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re discussing some top secret project, but they are a nice change from an office vibe and can often promote better discussions. Corporate boardrooms can make people nervous and will inhibit their creativity, and can assert an image as manager. Coffee shops represent collaboration and equality, and just have a calmer overall feel.

That’s just the beginning. Everyone has to find the right environment for them and if you haven’t tried it I highly recommend you give it a go. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, and if you do the same. If you want some great cafes to try this out at, here are some of my favourites:

Timberyard

A very relaxed vibe, and no need to register for the WiFi. They also offer a variety of coffees, teas, and harder stuff too as you draw the working day to a close. Downstairs also features meeting space and desks.

TAP Coffee

TAP actively promote the use of their cafes for working. They’ve got benches to work at, and big group tables. Originally TAP is all about the brewing process, so you’re destined to find a coffee you love, too.

Starbucks

The obvious choice, but Starbucks is good for those with more of a sweet tooth, or looking to stay within their comfort zone. It’s a safe choice, and it works.

Workshop Coffee Co.

This cafe is a lovely little place where they actually also offer master classes and coffee subscriptions. There’s one just off Oxford Street if you love being central.

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At Mayfair House Apartments, we are committed to maintaining the trust and confidence of our visitors to our web site. We want you to know that we never share email lists or your data with other companies for marketing purposes. In this Privacy Policy, we provide information detailing why we collect your personal information and how we use it. We also outline the limited conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

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Who we are

At Mayfair House, we are committed to maintaining the trust and confidence of our visitors to our web site. We want you to know that we never share email lists or your data with other companies for marketing purposes. In this Privacy Policy, we provide information detailing why we collect your personal information and how we use it. We also outline the limited conditions under which we may disclose it to others and how we keep it secure.

Access to your personal information
We do not sell personal details to third parties for any purpose nor will we share your personal data from 25th May 2018 with any other organisations or promoters that have not been named in our privacy policy for their own marketing communications.

Changes to this Privacy Notice
We may make changes to our privacy policy from time to time. Regularly reviewing this page ensures that you are always aware of what information we collect, how we use it and under what circumstances we will share it with third parties.

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We use cookies to help identify your computer so we can tailor your user experience, track shopping basket contents and remember where you are in the order process.
You can disable any cookies already stored on your computer, but these may stop our website from functioning properly.

The following is strictly necessary in the operation of our website.
This website will:
· Remember what is in your shopping basket
· Remember where you are in the order process
· Remember that you are logged in and that your session is secure.  You need to be logged in to complete an order.
The following are not Strictly Necessary, but are required to provide you with the best user experience and also to tell us which pages you find most interesting (anonymously).

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This website will: *Offer Live Chat Support (If available)
*Track the pages you visits via Google Analytics. This information is only processed in a way which does not identify anyone. We do not make, and do not allow Google to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website.

Targeting Cookies
This website will: Allow you to share pages with social networks such as Facebook (if available)
· Allow you to share pages via Add This (if available)
To view the ‘Add This’ Privacy Policy or to opt out of any online behavioural advertising, please visit Add This and click on the ‘Opt Out’ button.
This website will not: Share any personal information with third parties.

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We offer free wifi at our properties but do not store or collect data from our clients. [/restab]
[restab title=”Mailing Lists”]Mailing Lists
As part of the registration process for our newsletter, we collect personal information. We use that information for a couple of reasons: to tell you about stuff you’ve asked us to tell you about; to contact you if we need to obtain or provide additional information; to check our records are right and to check every now and then that you’re happy and satisfied. We don’t rent or trade email lists with other organisations and businesses.
We use MailChimp, to deliver our newsletter. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. For more information, please see MailChimp’s privacy notice. You can unsubscribe to general mailings at any time of the day or night by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any of our emails[/restab]
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Booking Engine
When you book a room you use our booking engine which is provided by Hotelrez. To process orders successfully hotel rez needs to collect the following data
This will include:

personal information about you which we ask you for (e.g. your name, address, and email address) when you make a booking from our website or over the telephone;
a. financial details in order to process your reservation where a hotel requires pre-payment;
b. details of transactions you carry out through our website and details of the fulfilment of your orders.
We may only collect and process personal data collected and/or processed on behalf of a hotel in accordance with that hotel’s instructions. We cannot process it in any other way or for any other purpose.

You should refer to the hotel’s privacy and data protection policy for details of how they protect, and how they require us to protect, your personal information.
We are permitted by the hotel:
· to use your personal information for reserving rooms and/or other services for you at that hotel;
· to pass on your financial details to the hotel and/or appropriate third party (for example, credit card company) for the purpose of confirming or paying for a reservation (please note any credit card details will not be retained by us);
· to use your information for marketing purposes (where you agree to this); and
· to pre-complete forms and other details on our website to make your next visit to our website easier (eg when amending or cancelling a booking).

[/restab]
[restab title=”3rd Parties”]Third Parties
We do not sell personal details to third parties for any purpose nor will we share your personal data from 25th May 2018 with any other organisations or promoters that have not been named in our privacy policy for their own marketing communications.[/restab][/restabs]

 

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