Wouldn't this cafe eventually be filled with freeloaders who pay 9 pounds per day in order to get gourmet coffee and food all day long? That's a pretty good deal if you're a cheapskate living in london. Sandwhiches can be 9 pounds by themselves.
The impression I get from [1] is when a reporter visited the food was biscuits, peanut butter, toast and an onion (Apparently customers are invited to bring and cook their own food)
£9 would get you four loaves of bread[2] and three jars of peanut butter[3]. You'd have to be pretty hungry to eat enough of that for them to make a loss.
I assume the concept is fairly experimental at the moment, presumably they won't want people sprinting in, making an espresso for 3p and running out. Or I might have misunderstood what I read in [1]. In any case, it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out.
No, but if you have £9 a day you can buy a single loaf of bread and still have £8 left over.
I guess if you were homeless it might be worth £9 a day to have somewhere warm and indoors to stay, but the free entry museums, art galleries and libraries don't seem to get full of homeless people.
I have heard reports of 'pay what you like' restaurants getting filled up with homeless people, so I can see where you're coming from.
Whilst this is probably a joke, it's still a sweeping generalisation of the homeless that paints those in an incredibly unfortunate position as nothing more than cider swigging alcoholics. There are few things that irk me more than vilification of the homeless
I don't want to vilify my fellow Londoners, but to me, that's more a sweeping generalization of London. Getting wasted seems to be the #1 hobby of most the people I know here, no reason the homeless cannot have their share of fun.
It is no doubt a joke, and in my eyes a funny one at that. I wouldn't get too offended by it :) I know the local homeless around this area and there are very few that fit that stereotype
>I have heard reports of 'pay what you like' restaurants getting filled up with homeless people, so I can see where you're coming from.
That's really funny. Who would have thought there were more people who like eating for cheap than people who like paying for other people to eat for cheap?
Homeless people don't always have the energy to walk around 24/7 in the museum, and they probably have "no loitering" laws. As in you can't just sleep on a bench in the basement all day and scare the children.
There are a few of those progressive "pay what you want" styled restaurants in Toronto, Canada.
But when it comes down to it... they're actually $12/meal minimum throughout the week, and on wednesdays (most B&M business' slowest day in north america at least) they offer something like 50 meals which are "pay what you want" and once they're out of food, they're out.
In other words, "pay what you want" restaurants don't technically exist. Not in the long run. They're more of a marketing gimmick if you ask me.
This sounds ridiculously frugal, but if you're hard up for cash but have a freezer and a toaster, then freezing bread and toasting it up again can make some pretty awesome sandwiches. You can also stick really cheap bulk-buy cheese on it and make a mini cheese toastie.
That said, if I were still poor, I wouldn't want to keep my stuff in the freezer at one of these pay-per-minute cafes, because it'd be gone by the next time you got to it. I also assume that they lock up at night, so I'm not really sure how this'd help vagrants all that much.
However, if you happened to be lucky with the other people in the cafe (i.e. no-one being obnoxious or noisy), then it makes a ridiculously cheap coworking space.
Your every day grocery store bread tastes about the same after being frozen, and eaten later on. I know at my parent's place, my mom usually has 5 or 6 in the freezer, because she lives outside of town, so it makes more sense to stock up. I live in the city, by myself, so sometimes I'll buy a loaf, make some sandwiches, and toss the rest in the fridge. I don't mind it a little cold, and it doesn't go moldy before I'm able to eat the rest. If I buy fresh bread from the bakery or market, I just eat the entire thing within a day or two because it's delicious, and freezing would be a sin.
If you were really poor, a bread machine is probably the easiest & cheapest way to make bread. It comes out to be around 25 cents a loaf, and you can control how much you want to make per batch. You only really need yeast and flour. However, the $25 bread machine is a small investment required.
Wouldn't making it by hand and throwing it in an oven be cheaper?
Although it depends on your oven if gas or electric, your time and effort, how much power a bread machine uses. The oven makes bread far better than a bread machine but a bread machine is better than mass produced, sliced, preservative laden white bread.
But you could time it so the bread is baked when the oven is used for cooking supper.
A toaster oven with small bread pans also works great and is more versatile for about $10 more. Among other things I made sweetbread this way for several months when I was in college using instant pancake mix mixed with cracked wheat.
Making your bread by hand is cheaper. And I'd drop the yeast. Just do your own wild-caught sourdough. (You do need salt, however. Bread without salt doesn't really work. And water.)
If you're only optimising for cost, sure. If you're also optimising for effort, yeast is a no-brainer.
The machine is useful if you're not good at/willing to/able to plan a bit. You have to do a number of steps on a schedule when baking by hand, there's only one to worry about with a machine.
I do that anyway even for a single loaf of bread since I hate dry, stale bread. The freezer keeps it fresh and to make toast just throw the frozen slices into a toaster, no need to thaw first.
Yea--I grew up in the "if you want something to eat learn
how to cook Dude". Plus, my girlfriends we so terrible(I think they were rebelling, or though it was cute?)
at cooking. One of the first things I learned how to
make was bread, but it always came out terrible, except pizza dough. I have perfected rice with a steamer though.
Rice is cheap if you are strapped.
Very true. We don't eat enough bread to keep the loaf fresh for its lifetime, and we are then left with chucking bread out.
Instead, we split the loaf and use slices as necessary.
Freeze it, then after a bit of experimentation, you can find the perfect toaster setting to defrost it (and even have it warm) without toasting it. I do it all the time.
What really annoys me is that it's possible to make bread that lasts for >30 days, but they don't due to people's stupid phobias of food treatments. Before I started freezing it all the time, I used to waste so much from it going mouldy, so I'd bet many people still do.
I don’t think so. The Anticafé in Paris has the exact same concept with roughly the same pricing (€14/day), and has been open for more than 8 months now. AFAIK they don’t have such problem and the place is crowded by students and 20-something with MacBooks everywhere. They don’t offer sandwichs so it’s hard to have a "real" lunch here, you’d better go buy a €4 sandwich elsewhere and come back eat it there. As students, we don’t really come there for the free food, but because you can stay all the day working without being disturbed by a waiter asking you to leave.
Is the cafe very loud? Are people generally respectful of each other? These are the only real concerns I'd have with using such a cafe as a working space.
Or if someone is a real cheapskate, they could come here twice a day (£3.6) for two meals. They have coffee, fruits, veges and a kitchen - what else do you need?
You can go and sit downstairs in the Google Campus cafe for free and get 70MB/s internet, which is just around the corner. That's where the freeloaders go :)
The information in that article is incorrect. The Café at Google Campus is (and has always been) free to use, although the tea and coffee is indeed paid separately. Alternatively you can pay to become a 'Resident' on the other floors where you can enjoy free tea and coffee.
I think the author was hoping to encourage startups out of the free seats! ;)
As mentioned above, the cafe is free and run by Central Working. You can use it Monday to Friday, 9am - 6pm. You get free wifi. You have to pay for coffee, but it is very good (provided by Dose Espresso, who use Square Mile Roasters).
TechHub (who run 1st and 2nd floors) offer resident or flex membership. Flex gives you access Monday - Friday, 9am - 8pm. Resident gives you 24/7 access with your own desk. Everybody gets free coffee and toast.
3rd floor changes from month to month, but doesn't usually offer coworking.
Seedcamp are on the 4th floor. Obviously, you only get to use that space if you have been accepted into Seedcamp.
Used to work at a coworking space near there that was £40 for 2 days a week, a really great deal. Wish I could find anything approaching that in Melbourne, for some reason they are incredibly expensive hear in Australia.
Of course, it would be easy to create an environment that deterred laptop users if that's not compatible with what they're hoping to achieve.