Cafe Plus | how does this "Starbucks for the elderly" change the lifestyle of the elderly

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After the elderly retire, apart from their families, they have a lot of free time to spend. After entering the retirement state, most of the elderly people's life no longer revolves around work and family, and public places become the center of daily life.

Separated from the original familiar business organizations, many elderly people are easy to fall into a state of loss and aimlessness in life, and urgently need a public space suitable for the elderly to provide them with a sense of organization and belonging.

Ray Odenberg, a professor at the University of West Florida in the United States, calls the public places (bookstores, cafes, fast food restaurants) where people meet frequently as "the third place". The functions of these [third places] are more important to social development than the family (the first place) or the workplace (the second place).

Inspired by the concept of this third place, an American organization launched Cafe Plus, a Starbucks for the elderly, which not only provides general coffee shop functions, but also provides a wide range of life information, cultural lectures and fitness exercises. The Cafe Plus model has been a great success in the United States and has been widely copied in other countries.

The emergence of this model of Cafe Plus is closely related to the psychological, physiological and social environment of the elderly. Cafe plus aims to provide cost-effective meals and drinks as a starting point to alleviate the disconnection between the elderly and society by providing a public place for the middle-aged and the elderly.

Due to the weak link between middle-aged and elderly people and social organizations, more than 70% of the elderly have loneliness and various mental health problems.

While young people spend a lot of time every day occupied by work, accompanied by countless entertainment variety shows, in fact, middle-aged and elderly people are far more eager for social needs than young people.

This strong demand for social networking has promoted the prosperity and development of all kinds of offline elderly community organizations. today, we see square dance / art community start-up projects that circle hundreds of thousands of middle-aged and elderly people in a short time, queues of universities for the elderly, and the explosive growth of the middle-aged and elderly tourism market, which is driven by the strong demand for social entertainment among the middle-aged and elderly.

If you pay close attention to it, you will find that many KTV in Beijing have become regular gathering places for a large number of middle-aged and elderly people on weekdays. This phenomenon exists not only in Beijing, but also in other parts of the country. In the future, there may be chain social entertainment places specifically aimed at the middle-aged and elderly in the market.

AgeClub has been dealing with many offline pension start-up companies. From the current business situation of these companies, we can see that it is not that the middle-aged and elderly people have no demand and are not willing to pay, but that the quality of the existing products / services on the market is difficult to stimulate the consumer desire of this group.

AgeClub believes that the community is the nearest public place for the middle-aged and the elderly, and there must be an opportunity to develop a new business model by taking the community as the center and providing upgraded versions of elderly services for the middle-aged and elderly.

This model needs to upgrade and innovate the existing community pension services, and needs to dig deep into the needs behind this group. We can't always expect to charge for the elderly by cutting their hair, cutting their nails, taking their blood pressure, and judging their willingness to pay.

The case introduced by AgeClub today is Mather LifeWays, a non-profit organization with a very innovative spirit in the field of old-age care in the United States. We hope that the introduction of the development model of this organization will give inspiration to domestic companies exploring in the field of pension services.

After years of development, Mather LifeWays now has four main service sections: Institute for ageing, Housing for the elderly, Neighbourhood Plan and Mather's-More Than a Caf é (Caf é plus). One of the most famous Caf é plus models, which combines Starbucks, Bally's and Elderhostel perfectly, is an innovative model in the hearts of older Americans.

Since 2005, the coffee é plus model has been copied successively by cafes all over the United States. at present, 180non-profit organizations and elderly services from 138cities around the world have joined Mather LifeWays's caf é plus membership group, covering 34 states in the United States and 6 countries.

Among them, after combining the local cultural characteristics, 35 cities from 16 states of the United States and 2 Asian countries (Japan and South Korea) have successfully applied the caf é plus model to local cafes. Among them, Japan's Mitian Coffee has developed 571 stores in Japan by learning this model.

The success of Caf é Plus can be summed up as follows:

(1) provide meals and drinks at reasonable prices

(2) provide all kinds of favorable life information.

(III) provide opportunities for maintaining health, learning and training skills

(4) provide social opportunities to meet new people

Mather LifeWays-- quality Retirement Life Research and Service Organization for the elderly

Founded in 1941, Matherlifeways is a non-sectarian, non-profit organization based in Evanston, Illinois, and now focuses on changing lifestyles and living choices to improve the quality of life of today's elderly. Its core values are: purposeful, possible, extraordinary, and innovative (Purposeful, Possible, Extraordinary, Transformational).

Matherlifeways has four main service areas: the Institute on ageing, Housing for the elderly, the Neighbourhood Plan and Mather's-More Than a Caf é (Caf é plus).

Figure 1:Matherlifeways 's main business areas

Figure the age composition of the 2:Matherlifeways service object

Institute of Geriatrics: founded in 1999 to evaluate Mather lifeWays's residential and community projects for the elderly, in addition to providing research and consulting services to elderly service providers, committed to promoting the field of ageing research services.

Housing for the elderly: mainly to provide a comfortable and convenient accommodation for the elderly, three residential communities for the elderly have been established, located in Evanston, Illinois, Wilmett and Tucson, Arizona.

Neighborhood program: mainly for the elderly to build a good communication platform to break down the community barriers for the elderly (without walls). Recently, the website has been fully updated, and the business of the Neighbourhood Project has also been adjusted, mainly involving four modules:

(1) Morton Grove activity Center

Located in Morton Grove and close to the Veterans Memorial Civic Center, the center offers education, health and music courses, as well as different games such as mahjong and playing cards.

(2) Edgewater community

The Edgewater Community Project focuses on the elderly community collaboration to provide courses, lunches, health information, etc. Edgewater Community's "without walls" program has served the elderly in Chicago for 15 years.

(3) telephone discussion

Telephone discussion service is a telephone discussion project in which the elderly can have free topic exchange and discussion at home. In 2014, a total of 180 elderly people learned about architects through telephone topic learning.

(4) Skokie lunch activity Centre

The center, located in Skokie, mainly provides nutritious low-priced lunches for the elderly, mainly for people over the age of 60. During lunch, they can chat, make friends, chat with neighbors, and learn about nutrition and fitness.

Cafe plus is the most concerned and award-winning project in the service field of Matherlifeways, and it has been copied by organizations all over the country since 2005, mainly for the comprehensive leisure and entertainment places for the elderly, mainly adopting the entity plus promotion model.

AgeClub will give a detailed and comprehensive introduction to Caf é plus below.

Caf é Plus--More than a coffee

The cultural background of the caf é Plus model

Coffee is an important drink in American daily life. American coffee culture is equivalent to Chinese tea culture. Americans usually have a cup of coffee after work and rest, and a coffee shop can be found every few steps in Seattle, the birthplace of Starbucks.

The background of Matherlifeways Caf é Plus is rooted in American coffee culture, and what is special about this coffee shop is that it mainly targets people over the age of 50 in the United States, and its slogan is "More than a coffee" (not just a coffee). It not only provides a place for the elderly to drink coffee and eat, but also a good place to make friends and chat.

The Development of Caf é plus-- an innovative Model in the hearts of the American elderly

The concept of cafe plus was introduced in 2001, and the first Mather's--More Than a cafe opened near Wood Park in Chicago. The Caf é plus concept has been widely praised by the New York Times as a perfect integration of Starbucks, Bally's and Elderhostel, and is an innovative example of American centers for the elderly.

Since 2005, cafe plus's model has been copied by cafes all over the country. Cafe plus won awards not only for this concept, but also for the architectural design of its brick-and-mortar stores, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1:Caf é plus concept Award list

How to copy a successful Caf é plus

(1) site selection to facilitate the travel of the elderly

Cafe plus's model is mainly restaurant plus community, and this award-winning concept aims to provide interesting, educational and health-related activities for people over the age of 50.

At present, there are three more than a coffee directly operated by Matherlifeways, two in the northwest of Chicago and one in the southeast of Chicago, two of which are located near the park, both of which are located in places where the elderly live and are convenient to travel. Three stores have received 84668 customers in 2015.

Download specific event information and menus of the three cafes can be found on Matherlifeways's website, and you can subscribe to the restaurant's event information. Figure 2 specific information of the three stores in Mather LifeWays Cafe Plus.

Picture the specific information of the three stores in 2:Mather LifeWays Cafe Plus

(2) A full range of meals are economical and affordable.

The three Matherlifeways Caf é Plus all scored 4.0 on the American version of Dianping yelp, and even 4.5 on the Portage park restaurant. Customers generally responded that it was suitable for breakfast and lunch, offering free wireless, relatively quiet, and the food in the cafe was both cheap and delicious.

According to the menu offered by Mather LifeWays, which is mainly divided into breakfast menu and lunch menu, Chicago Wood Park currently serves dinner with a full range of American meals, such as sandwiches, pancake, salads, hamburgers, drinks, etc., each meal costs no more than $7, which is affordable for the elderly.

(3) courses and activities are rich and up-to-date.

Matherlifeways Caf é Plus offers not only meals, but also a variety of activities, and you can check the specific event schedule of each store on the official website.

These include: music and entertainment, health care, learning, travel, cooking, fitness, arts and innovation, learning skills and some free activities, each of which (including meals and activities) is cheap, usually no more than $20. The schedule of each store is updated every three months.

Customer experience of Cafe plus Model

From the customer's point of view, Matherlifeways Caf é Plus starts with a cup of coffee, and then, in addition to enjoying the delicious food in the restaurant, you can also browse through a variety of activities in the restaurant, such as a lifelong learning program, the restaurant also has other leisure and entertainment areas such as computers, yoga, writing and fitness, in addition to the dining area, and even set up Matherlifeways's senior choir.

In order to create an activity community suitable for the elderly. Take a specific elderly person as an example: Pat Keze, 66, has taken dance and piano lessons through Mather's-More Than a Caf é in six years and attended more than 50 seminars using skype.

Café plus The secret to rapid replication

Mather LifeWays, the originator of the Café plus concept, opened three coffee shops in Chicago under the Café plus concept. Mather LifeWays 'main model for promoting the Café plus concept is to join members and provide consulting services for members.

Key consulting services include: study tours for community groups interested in the Café plus model, on-site study tours to three Chicago café plus operated by Mather LifeWays, and access to Mather LifeWays advice on operating models, including how to identify market needs, measure customer satisfaction, engage, save budgets and train employees.

AgeClub believes: Mather LifeWays 'marketing model is not only attractive because of the café plus concept, but also because Mather LifeWays' Institute on Aging, which studies projects within the organization, provides a good basis for café plus to keep pace with the times and provides a good guarantee for café plus members to provide consulting services.

Café plus development status-covering 34 states in the United States, replicated to 6 countries

According to data disclosed in Mather LifeWays '2015 report, 180 nonprofit organizations, senior service organizations, etc. from 138 cities have joined Mather LifeWays' café plus membership group, covering 34 states and 6 countries in the United States.

Among them, café plus mode has been successfully applied to local cafes in 35 cities from 16 states in the United States and 2 Asian countries (Japan and South Korea) after combining local cultural characteristics. See Figure 4 for details.

According to statistics, 65% of the members of organizations that successfully applied the café plus concept increased community outreach and engagement activities, 57% offered different types of courses and projects, 57% increased customer engagement, 46% of employees retrained in customer service technology, 38% increased cooking services, and 38% of organizations were fully utilizing new marketing tools.

Figure 4: Extension of the Café plus model in the United States

An overview of the global success stories of Caf é plus

Although the Caf é plus model is applied to more than 50 + elderly people, it is localized according to the different conditions of each region. South Korea, for example, has adopted the form of cooperation with the government, but also according to its own conditions, set up several different centers to provide services for the elderly.

In Japan, the coffee culture of the United States has been replaced with the tea culture. In other states of the United States, the model is applied to senior center, where young volunteers provide services for the elderly, and also to taverns & bookstores, where there are a variety of activities. The main application cases are introduced in Table 2.

Table typical cases of promotion of 2:caf é plus model in various places