Coders and techies in cafes? The sight is so commonplace, especially in Silicon Valley, that it has become a geek cliche.
But tech companies wading in to the cafe business? That's not so common. Which is in part why HANAhaus, a cafe created by German tech giant SAP that just opened in the technology powerhouse city of Palo Alto, drew curious crowds on its launch day.
It helped that the cafe fills one of the city's iconic locations, the much-loved 1927 Varsity Theatre on the city's main street, University Avenue.
The theatre dominates the block, but has sat empty and abandoned since a Borders bookstore vacated the remodelled interior in 2011 after the chain went bankrupt.
Now, the old Spanish-style entry courtyard is full of life, with coffee drinkers on laptops filling the seat-yourself tables surrounding a central fountain.
Many passersby halt, crane their necks to look around and meander in to explore further.
A queue of customers interested in a coffee, chai or food from HANAhaus's co-resident, the famed San Francisco coffee house Blue Bottle Coffee, snaked out the door for much of the day.
Anyone can come in and sit at the tables or in a public area inside and make us of the free wifi.
But the heart of the venture is further back on the right, where a huge open space, where the theatre seats used to be, hosts an open-plan range of work and discussion areas for use by individuals or groups.
These can be hired for relatively modest fees: $3 an hour for an individual, $10 for a small group seating area or $75 an hour for conference rooms set into the former theatre’s side aisles.
Some of the architectural flourishes from the original Varsity remain and are part of the design.
The old movie marquee still fronts the building, too, offering the name HANAhaus rather than a film title. But the name – HANA is SAP’s flagship database management product – is the only hint that the venture is associated in any way with SAP.
"Here, we're completely off the grid from SAP," says Sanjay Shirole, vice-president and global head of HANAhaus.
No logo
There’s not a single SAP logo anywhere. Even the website, hanahaus.com, which must be used to book the workspace area, doesn’t give any overt indication that the cafe is SAP-run.
The corporate name is nonexistent on the home page. The interior colours of the building – pale yellow, soft greys and creams – vaguely hint at SAP’s butterscotch yellow corporate colour, but not much.
That’s all deliberate, says Shirole. SAP does not really mind if people make the SAP connection or not. However, given the location in tech-centred Palo Alto – much of the downtown area’s former office and retail buildings are now home to technology-related firms – many will.
Creative workspaces
“People who know SAP and SAP Ventures will know exactly what HANA means. It’s a subtle way to market it.”
As the website explains – if a visitor clicks past the main page and reads to the last paragraph of the "About Us" section, where the company is finally mentioned –HANAhaus is the "brainchild" of SAP co-founder and chairman Hasso Plattner.
“He had this idea about 1½ years ago to create creative and entrepreneurial workspaces, located in innovation hubs, like Palo Alto, Berlin, London and Shanghai. They would be non-SAP-branded, and these places would not be selling SAP products. And these places would be anchored by world-class coffee and food,” says Shirole.
Hence the partnership with Blue Bottle Coffee. HANAhaus is the company’s first venture this far south of San Francisco, and an entrepreneurial undertaking in its own right – Blue Bottle has never gone into a venue as large, nor offered a lunch and dinner menu, says Shirole.
HANAhaus is about technology, but also, not about technology, a mix that seemed to baffle some visitors. The website explains HANAhaus as “a community of purpose defining a new cafe experience where creative individuals and entrepreneurs can come together to meet, socialise, share ideas and connect with experts”.
Once the venue finds its feet and gains further partnerships, that will eventually mean tech talks, seminars, lectures, music events, poetry slams, design workshops, “maker” events, live comedy, pitch nights for young companies, and tech help days featuring varied technology experts and services at a designated “tech desk” (which may well include SAP products or services now and then, says Shirole)– just about anything that might fit within the space, which has a small stage at one end.
Palo Alto is the first of what SAP hopes will be several cafes in Europe, the US and Asia, each with its own architectural design and feel, and local coffee and food partner.
But still: why is SAP doing this? A few other corporates have set up cafes, but have done them as a branding exercise. For example, further north in San Francisco (and in other US cities), CapitalOne Bank runs a cafe in which the banker baristas can discuss a loan or mortgage while they prepare your latte (http://cafes.capitalone360.com/). Visitors get 50 per cent off their coffee if they use their CapitalOne debit card. And in Berlin, Microsoft runs a joint cafe and showroom called the Digital Eatery that, of course, has its own app (http://www.microsoft.com/de-de/ corporate/microsoft-berlin/the-digital-eatery/default.aspx).
Innovating
“Hasso, being an innovator, continues to be a very active investor on the innovation scene,” says Shirole. “He felt, for us to keep innovating as a company, we have to go beyond our own walls.”
SAP hopes HANAhaus will give “an understanding of how people are working, what are the trends . . . and also, we are interested in genuinely working with the creative community out there.”
Meanwhile, back at the check-in desk for the workspace area, a bemused couple are trying to figure out what the “HANA” in HANAhaus means. “Is it for, like, the Japanese name that means flower?” the man asks a staff member. Told HANA is actually a database software product, the couple burst out laughing.
“We got that totally wrong,” he says.
Well, actually, as an exercise in non-branding, HANAhaus might feel he got it perfectly right.
