Flat Whites: How and Why People Work in Cafes

This research note reports on recent research examining people working in caf s in Auckland, with a view to exploring how and why people use caf s to facilitate work and their productivity. Caf s are recognised as an important component of retail districts and cities more generally (Florida, 2004; Hospers & van Dalm, 2005; Jacobs, 1969), but they are rarely taken seriously as workplaces in literature about work.

[1]  G. Hospers,et al.  How to create a creative city? The viewpoints of Richard Florida and Jane Jacobs , 2005 .

[2]  J. Jacobs,et al.  The Economy of Cities , 1969 .

[3]  Alan Latham,et al.  Urbanity, Lifestyle and Making Sense of the New Urban Cultural Economy: Notes from Auckland, New Zealand , 2003 .

[4]  D. Navon,et al.  Alone together: Public and private dimensions of a Tel-Aviv cafe , 1991 .

[5]  Eantrepreneurship American Journal of Small Business , 1976 .

[6]  J. Hudson A DIAMOND ANNIVERSARY , 1979 .

[7]  E. Laurier The region as a socio-technical accomplishment of mobile workers , 2001 .

[8]  H. Willmott,et al.  Power and Subjectivity at Work: From Degradation to Subjugation in Social Relations , 1989 .

[9]  Ej Iversen Knowledge, Technology and Policy , 2004 .

[10]  N. Thrift Environment and Planning D: Society and Space , 1995 .

[11]  Alan Felstead,et al.  The shifting locations of work , 2005 .

[12]  Daniel J. Lair,et al.  Marketization and the Recasting of the Professional Self , 2005 .

[13]  E. Laurier How Breakfast Happens in the Café , 2008 .

[14]  G. Sewell,et al.  `Someone to Watch Over Me': Surveillance, Discipline and the Just-in-Time Labour Process , 1992 .

[15]  P. Austin,et al.  Auckland: Cappuccino city? , 1998 .

[16]  George Cheney,et al.  Rhetoric in an organizational society : managing multiple identities , 1992 .

[17]  Celia Lury,et al.  The labour of identity: performing identities, performing economies , 1999 .

[18]  Angus Whyte,et al.  An ethnography of a neighbourhood cafÃa: informality, table arrangements and background noise , 2001 .

[19]  Nancy M. Dixon,et al.  The hallways of learning , 1997 .

[20]  W. Haine The World of the Paris Café: Sociability among the French Working Class, 1789-1914 , 1996 .

[21]  A. Latham Urban Renewal, Heritage Planning and the Remaking of an Inner-city Suburb: A Case Study of Heritage Planning in Auckland, New Zealand , 2000 .

[22]  E. Goffman The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[23]  R. Florida Cities and the Creative Class , 2003 .

[24]  D. Holt Consumption and Identity at Work. , 1997 .

[25]  Scottish café society: contemporary consumption issues and lifestyle identities , 2006 .

[26]  Alan Felstead,et al.  Changing Places of Work , 2005 .

[27]  Amy L. Ostrom,et al.  A Cup of Coffee With a Dash of Love , 2007 .

[28]  Ray Oldenburg,et al.  The great good place : cafés, coffee shops, community centers, beauty parlors, general stores, bars, hangouts, and how they get you through the day , 1991 .

[29]  R. Kamineni Who is an Entrepreneur? A Review , 2002 .

[30]  Eric Laurier,et al.  Possible geographies: a passing encounter in a cafe , 2006 .

[31]  Gert-Jan Hospers,et al.  Creative cities: Breeding places in the knowledge economy , 2003 .

[32]  Wayne F. Cascio,et al.  Managing a virtual workplace , 2000 .

[33]  Chris Warhurst,et al.  The importance of attitude and appearance in the service encounter in retail and hospitality , 2005 .

[34]  William Foote Whyte,et al.  The Social Structure of the Restaurant , 1949, American Journal of Sociology.

[35]  W. Gartner “Who Is an Entrepreneur?” Is the Wrong Question , 1988 .

[36]  Philip Crang,et al.  It's Showtime: On the Workplace Geographies of Display in a Restaurant in Southeast England , 1994 .

[37]  A. Pred,et al.  Place as Historically Contingent Process: Structuration and the Time-Geography of Becoming Places , 1984 .