Meet n’ Eat

Here’s the idea… imagine a place like Panera or Atlanta Bread Company or Camille’s Sidewalk Cafe. Basically, your typical bakery/casual restaurant/coffee shop. Now add four or five meeting rooms. Just as with the restaurants noted, there is free Wi-Fi. If you want to reserve the meeting room, all you have to do is purchase a set amount of food/drink.

So let’s throw a hypothetical out there… I have a couple of remote sales people in the region. I need to do some training with them. It should take about 2 hours, but I need everyone to be able to connect to our VPN for the training session. I could meet in a hotel that offers Wi-Fi and do the training there. The cost would be whatever I pay for hotel room. Depending on the hotel that could be $50 to $150, depending on level of hotel. Hotels also offer dedicated meeting rooms, but these usually are cost prohibitive for a small two to four person meeting.

Enter the new idea… I reserve the room at the local “Meet n Eat” for a minimum food order of $50 for three hours. The room is perfectly sized for a small meeting. Food and drink are provided in the cost. All we have to do is show up.

I have no idea if that’s even a viable concept, but it struck me as a good idea when I was looking for places to train some remote staffers here at good old USAT.