tangentalizingly delicious

Tuesday May 30, 2006

Since I transferred the general principles of Second Space into a restaurant type setting, I’ve been idly thinking about what other industries the same basic principle might apply to.

It really isn’t a new principle at all. As I mentioned, hair salons work based on rented chairs all the time, and I think it’s very common throughout the cosmetics industry. Do the various makeup booths in large department stores rent the space? I don’t know. I know nail care places do, and I suspect there are massage clinics (I am not sure that’s the correct word, but I don’t want to use ‘parlour’ as I don’t mean any sort of salacious activity) who do.

Markets and bazaars and flea markets seem to already employ this principle, many people with booths offering variations of the same thing collect in one place to attract and share clientele. Malls, be they indoor, strip or box store locations excercise this same principle, although it starts to get a little bit disconnected as the area gets larger.

Thinking about it a bit, the Shared Restaurant type concept is in many ways just a food court but slightly dolled up and more flexible.

But what new areas can it be applied to? Second Space, and significantly moreso it’s inspiration Paragraph NY are a fairly new application, but all over the place are small offices that are shared by a few companies or studios shared by a couple of artists of all sorts.

It seems to be best applied to retail and service type industries, and especially those that can exist in a small location, and really I think that almost everywhere that it would work well it is already in use.

The concept of Second Space is intentionally genericised to appeal to many types of independant office type workers, which covers a significant number of industries. The Shared Restaurant idea isn’t terribly new, it’s just a reframing of a food court or even a market or bazaar or popular city street where people are selling food from a booth or hot dog cart. There’s lots of opportunities for using shared space in interesting ways, but even still I haven’t been able to think of another.

I think largely though, that is because of lack of exposure to other options. I think about offices a lot, because I am in one a lot, and I dream about what a great one might be. I think about restaurants a lot, mostly because I enjoy cooking, and so I take an idea that’s been sticking in my head and think of another way to use it. Right now the other major influence in my thinking is home maintenance, storage and gardens and painting rooms and such, and that seems very difficult to apply to the concept. A large retail outlet full of individual home improvement vendors may work well, but I don’t really see what advantage is gained over very large retaillers like Rona or Home Depot.

Second Space has an advantage in that it saves money for people looking for very small amounts of office space. Shared Restuarant… well, it probably wouldn’t make any money, but it would theoretically let people try cooking or allow chefs to build a menu and clientele before launching a full restaurant on their own, perhaps.

Maybe as I get exposed to other industries I’ll be able to see ways to cram them into my current favorite mold, though to be honest, I rather doubt it.