Canadian Workspace-cafés

Filling a niche between traditional coffee shop hangout and shared offices, the workspace-café allows flexibility and convenience, a concept that is gaining ground in Canada. The idea was to build on the spread and huge success of coffee shops to create a multipurpose space away from home for use as an office, or a student reading room, or whatever the customer requires, at a relatively affordable rate compared to an office lease, for example. The emergence of the work cafés coincides with a jump in the number of Canadians who are now self-employed. While the number of private or public sector employees remained stagnant over the past year, the number of self-employed rose 3.4 percent or by about 90,000 people in Canada.