Authenticity in third places: the case of Ziferblat

In September 2011, the world’s first pay-per-minute cafe called Ziferblat opened in Moscow. Unlike traditional cafes, Ziferblat offered a community experience without the pressure to constantly consume food and drinks: it charged customers only for the time they spent in the venue, in return providing them with free wifi, refreshments and access to kitchen facilities. Ziferblat’s founder, 27-year-old blogger and cultural activist Ivan Mitin described his project as ‘the revival of the classic European coffeehouse’, restoring the value of social interaction in a commercial servicescape, a ‘social media in real life’, providing a rare opportunity of unmediated encounter in an increasingly digitised world, and a ‘public living room’, where the domestic meets the social. In just a couple of years, Ziferblat grew into an international chain of 18 branches, including nine in Russia, five in the UK, two in Ukraine, one in Slovenia and one in Mongolia, and inspired thousands of entrepreneurs to open their own pay-per-minute cafes in Europe, Asia and North America. Drawing on a multi-site, multi-method case study of Ziferblat, I will discuss the complex and controversial role of authenticity in so-called ‘third places’—informal gathering places outside home and work, such as cafes, pubs and other semi-public spaces (Oldenburg, 1989). In a nutshell, the idea of authenticity, strongly represented in Ziferblat’s physical design and social practices, cuts both ways in terms of how much it contributes, or not, to social cohesion and diversity, and becomes increasingly diluted and commodified as an independent business starts scaling up.