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We’re launching a new coworking franchise concept called Coco. You might have seen mention of it in MinneInno, the Star Tribune or Twin Cities Business.
Coco is a novel take on coworking. It’s a shared workspace by day and a social club by night. We’ve already opened a prototype location is already up and running in Cincinnati. Our goal is to grow the Coco brand through franchising. As part of this process, we will soon be rebranding to Coco.
What’s Coco like?
There’s nothing quite like it. The Cincinnati prototype space is a beautifully designed destination that offers coworking suites, meeting rooms and lounges. The same space is also purpose-built to host guests for events and private dining. Then, in the evening, the center of the space becomes a social club, with a full-service bar that opens to members and their guests at 5 p.m. Whether they come for work, social or both, we believe this will be the ultimate haven for entrepreneurs and small businesses.
In addition to their ongoing roles as the leaders of the original Coco business, Kyle Coolbroth will be CEO and Don Ball will be CSO (Chief Social Officer) of Coco. They’ll be backed by a team of people who will promote the franchise offering and work with franchise owners to open new spaces. The official franchise offering is expected to take place in February and any new spaces would most likely begin opening in 2019.
Actually, beyond the name change, not much at first. The day-to-day member experience will not change. Membership plans and pricing will stay the same. And there are no planned changes to the Coco staff.
We do ultimately expect to bring some benefits back to Coco. For instance, Coco members will soon have access to Coco locations in Cincinnati and New York City*. And over the coming months, as the Coco team builds out its design and tech chops, we hope to bring some cool new features show up at the original Coco spaces. But only if they’re cool – as founding partners of Coco, we get to decide what we bring back to the nest.
In the future, as new Coco locations begin to open across the country, Coco members will have access to all of those locations. We expect these locations to be in major cities and popular neighborhoods – places people are likely to visit for work or play.
Here are answers to some of the questions we’ve received over the past few days
Q: Why are you doing this?
A: Like many of our members, we are entrepreneurs on a journey, trying to figure out how to grow our business. We looked at different forms of growth and ultimately chose to go in this direction. There are no guarantees of success, but we believe that the Coco concept has a good shot at being successful!
Q: Were you acquired?
A: Not at all. Coco is still an independent company, and will continue to be run by our co-founders and staff. To create this new business, we teamed up with two other companies:
- St. Gregory Development is a franchise development company that created CycleBar and grew it to 130 locations over 3 years.
- Fueled is mobile technology firm that created the original Coco in 2012.
*Q: Wait, there’s a New York City location?
A: Yes, Fueled is one of our partners in this venture. They operate the original Coco location, which was opened in 2012, and which became the namesake for this new venture.
