Meet Café , a new French startup founded by two brothers that wants to help companies switch to a hybrid remote-and-office workplace model. Café isn’t a traditional desk-booking tool. Instead, the company helps you see when people in your team are coming to the office so that you can plan when you should go to the office as well.
Instead of focusing on workspace, Café focuses on people first. “We decided that we wouldn’t let you book a desk directly,” co-founder and CTO Arthur Lorotte de Banes told me.
When you open the app, you get a simplified calendar view. For each day, you can see your team members divided by groups — people coming to the office, people working from home, etc.
In just a few taps, you can tell your other coworkers what you plan to do. This way, it becomes much easier to schedule meetings, have in-person conversation and more generally hang out with your coworkers. It also makes it easier to find a common day with a specific coworker if you’re working on the same project.
“We interviewed 150 companies and we realized companies faced the same issue after interviewing the first five companies. They all use spreadsheets,” co-founder and CEO Tom Nguyen told me.
Image Credits: Café
Using a tool like Café also gives you insights about your office. For instance, you can see the average number of persons in your office depending on the day of the week or the day of the month. Admins can configure a weekly reminder to make sure that everybody fills out information.
In addition to its mobile app and web app, Café integrates with your existing tools. For instance, you can connect your Café account with Slack so that your status on Slack reflects your status in Café. Teammates can hover over your name to know that you’re in the office or you’re at home.
The company is also working on integrations with human resource information systems, such as < a href="https://payfit.com/en/"> PayFit , so that your vacation is completely on their own synchronized with Café.
Image Credits: Café
As companies start hashing out a plan to return to at work, Café arrives on the market while in the right time. Companies can create program statuses to fit their definite needs. For instance, a Suc customer has created a status so they know who has the office factors to make sure that the office remains start.
The company produced a $1 million seed past from 122West, Kima Undertakings, Jonathan Widawski, Guillaume Lestrade, Jacques-Edouard Sabatier and a lot of business angels who execute or have worked for WeWork, Dropbox, Github, Snapchat, Intercom systems, Stripe, Alan and PayFit.
Like Typeform, Doodle or Slido, Suc has chosen a freemium strategy. Teams can will often free and start using the piece with their immediate coworkers. Your company don’t need to enter unit card information to sign up.
If you want to roll it out throughout the organization with more users, before anything else start paying. The beginning believes employees will become treadmill advocates for the entire organization. Would seem seems like the right strategy for a product that is supposed to make employees a more happy at work.
