- The idea of anti-café we came because they did not want to compete with the kebabs, pizza restaurants and bad coffee. We want to do something primitively new and surprise people.

 

How did the public take the idea?

- The public was surprised. The public has never thought about it before, probably time is one of the most expensive resources that we have. You can try to buy health, but you are unlikely to find a place where you can buy a couple of minutes of time. When people are our goods, they understand what they get - they come back.

 

Tell me a little more about who is behind your Anti-Cafe?

- When I needed money for this cafe, I looked around. The standard investment tools used by entrepreneurs here in our respect did not work. Nobody wants to invest in a cafe. Now it is fashionable to invest in Internet projects. Banks are also not particularly in a hurry to give loans. Fortunately. I came to my friends and asked if they wanted to buy a stake in my business, say, for a thousand euros. Now we own this cafe with ten men.

 

What else, besides time and coffee, can you find a visitor?

- We, for example, hold gaming evenings. Once a week we gather people and conduct tournaments for table games. We collect people for conversations, something like discussion clubs. We organized a bike-sharing, it does not bring money by itself, but people who know about this our service, come here for it.

 

How do people find you?

- I am a marketing specialist myself, and I do not like stupid advertising that does not bring concrete benefits. We create promotional materials that tell not only about the cafe, but also about something else that may interest our visitors. For example, a couple of months ago we received an offer to place advertising in one of the student magazines. We did not just give an advertisement, but financed an additional issue of this magazine, which was entirely about coffee. They killed not even two but three birds with one stone: they talked about themselves, helped the students and made a good issue, which is simply interesting to read.

 

How difficult was it to find a place under a cafe?

- The main problem was to explain to landlords that we are not a cafe. We do not cook anything, we do not have a kitchen and we do not need it. At people in a head there is a ready logic chain: cafe - preparation - smells - ventilation. We do not need anything. We found a beautiful room that could be remade for themselves. We were very helped by our landlord, who was imbued with our idea.