A cafe that features start-ups and share sales time.

In London, England, a handmade cappuccino usually costs 26 yuan in a cafe.

London recently opened a bizarre Ziferblat cafe in a semi-secluded corner of the trendy Shoreditch district, where all coffee and refreshments are served for free, but it costs 10 cents an hour for every minute you stay. In other words, for 26 yuan, you can stay in the cafe for 88 minutes, nearly an hour and a half.

Here, you can play the piano, go to the automatic coffee machine to make yourself a cup of hot coffee, grab a few biscuits from the cupboard, and get a box of milk from the refrigerator-just as comfortable as in a friend's living room, except that you have to pay a few pennies.

It sounds like life in a collectivist commune, and yes, Ziferblat originated in Russia (the name means "clock surface") and has successfully opened ten stores in Russia and expanded to Ukraine.

Ivan Mitin, founder of Ziferblat, said: guests who come here usually line up to wash their used cutlery, and they even help clean the cups and saucers left by others, which makes them feel like a big family. He treats his guests as "mini tenants" of shared space.

Ivan Mitin, who loves literature, believes that this is "The Social Network in real Life"-bringing social networks on the Internet back to reality. People hold all kinds of activities (but no drinking) in cafes to create a community atmosphere, which satisfies people's little fantasies: to return to a carefree childhood, abandon the foolish norms of adult society, and be the id back to be loved unconditionally.

Many cafes try to copy the Ziferblat model, but just rent a space, equipped with a few pieces of cheap Ikea furniture, and then let guests pay on time-usually fail, if there is not the right atmosphere, just mechanically charge hourly fees, guests often feel boring and will not patronize.

As for the profit model, Mitin says that as long as core customers stay here long enough, they don't lose money, and cafes collect small donations from regulars from time to time, but in the final analysis, he sees it as a pro bono project rather than a business model.

At the end of the article, I can't help but ask a lot of questions. Can it work in a cafe like China? Can such a cafe make a profit? How should such a cafe be run? What if the guests can't make coffee? What if the guests are hungry for three days and then come back to spend? Will such an affordable place be overcrowded? Where should such a store be located? How to deal with crowd positioning? Is there any need for restrictions?

Even if I think a lot in the end, I still think this kind of cafe is worth learning and deliberating. Cafes that can't last can try it.

Friends who want to open a shop can try it if they want to try something new.

Finally, advice: friends who want to make money by opening a shop should not try. Because founder Mitin says: he sees this as a pro bono project, not a business model.