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Tour Us First

Key Takeaways 🔑

  • For brokers and real estate teams, touring Workbar early can make the search more efficient. Clients leave with a clearer understanding of what they need, what they can share, and what they should prioritize.
  • Coworking doesn’t have to mean a maze of glass offices. Workbar combines private space with purpose-built environments for focused work, collaboration, meetings, calls, and connection.
  • Even if you choose a traditional office, the tour is valuable. You’ll see current ideas in furniture, technology, acoustics, finishes, and workplace design that can inform what you build.
  • Not every function needs dedicated space. Conference rooms, phone booths, cafés, collaboration areas, and other amenities can often be shared, reducing the size of a company’s private footprint.

Before you decide what your company needs, see what’s possible 🔎

Most office searches begin with a familiar list of requirements. A certain square footage, a set number of private offices and conference rooms, a kitchen, collaboration space, and room to grow.

But that list is too often based on how a company has leased office space in the past, not necessarily how its team works today.

That’s why we encourage companies and brokers to tour Workbar early in the search process. Even if coworking is not currently part of the plan, seeing a different way of using office space can help focus the search. And if “flexible office space” is part of the plan, it is even more important to tour Workbar first.

Workbar is not a typical coworking space. We are a locally operated network of workspaces designed around how people work throughout the day, with private offices and suites, meeting rooms, phone rooms, quiet areas, collaboration spaces, cafés, and different “neighborhoods” built for different types of work.

Seeing that environment firsthand often changes the way a company thinks about its next office, whether the ultimate solution is in a shared environment or in traditional space

It’s tempting to think you’ve seen every version of coworking. Workbar will surprise you. The Boston Business Journal once called us the “Goldilocks of coworking.” Come see why.

A tour can change the requirements 🚪

I’ve been touring companies through flexible workspaces for more than a decade, and the one constant is that people usually arrive thinking they know what they need. They need private offices, their own conference room, a collaboration area, and room to grow. Then they see how companies in our space do it.

I’m not arguing that some companies need secure, private space for their employees. But does it need to pay rent on a conference room that sits empty for most of the week? Instead, the team may be able to use Workbar’s bookable meeting rooms when needed.

Does every phone call need to happen inside a private suite? Does every company need its own kitchen with an employee whose only job is to manage the coffee and printer paper? What if they had access to phone booths, a collaboration area, and a Cafe right outside the door to its private suite? At Workbar, the company’s employees have access to all of this and more, giving them more choice than any company can build into its own private footprint.

This can all lead to a very different real estate requirement.

Instead of leasing enough space to accommodate every possible use case, they can use their private space for the functions that truly need to be private.

For some companies, that means a Workbar suite, a combination of private offices, or even a setup with mostly open coworking memberships can deliver everything they need with greater flexibility and less operational responsibility.

Productive coworking feels different 💻

Some companies initially rule out coworking because they picture a loud, distracting environment built primarily for individuals and small businesses.

Then they tour Workbar.

They see teams working productively. They experience the balance between energy and focus. They see how private space, shared space, meeting rooms, phone rooms, and hospitality can work together without making the workplace feel chaotic. There’s an assumption you can’t control company culture if you’re using shared space. But as our CEO once wrote in Forbes, you’re asking a lot of four walls if you expect it to build your company’s culture.

Touring Workbar first can challenge assumptions made before the search even begins, and ultimately shorten the time you spend in the market for space. In today’s environment, staying focused on what you do best and moving quickly matters. Search fatigue is real and choosing the right workspace shouldn’t slow you down.

It also allows the company to evaluate something that is difficult to understand from a highlighted floor plan or listing, how the workplace actually feels during the workday.

Sometimes the answer is still traditional space… or even another provider 🫢

Touring Workbar first does not mean Workbar will be the right answer for every company (even though I will disagree).

A prospective client may tour and conclude that it needs more dedicated office space, greater control over access, specialized infrastructure, prominent branding, or a completely private environment.

That is still a productive outcome.

Use the tour to see what’s possible. You’re not walking through a shell and trying to imagine what it could become, or touring an office that still has rows of cubicles from the Mad Men era. And you’re not touring a one-size-fits-all coworking model that’s essentially a maze of glass offices. You’re walking through a workspace that is new, consistently refreshed, and continually iterated based on how people actually work. See the latest in furniture, technology, acoustics, meeting spaces, phone rooms, finishes, and all the little bells and whistles that make a modern workplace work better. Even if you ultimately build your own office, you’ll leave with ideas worth stealing.

A useful first stop for brokers and real estate teams 💼

For brokers and internal real estate teams, bringing a client to Workbar early isn’t about narrowing the search. It’s about making the rest of the search smarter. Seeing a fully built, modern workplace in action helps clients get clearer on what they actually need, what they don’t, and what’s possible before they spend months touring space.

A Workbar tour can help answer important questions:

  • Does the company truly need a completely private environment?
  • If not, which functions or spaces actually need to remain private?
  • Which amenities need to be dedicated to the company, and which could be shared?
  • How often will the team actually use each type of space?
  • How important are flexibility, multiple locations, and the ability to grow or contract over time
  • How much of the day-to-day does the company want to handle itself?
  • What type of spaces and environments will help employees do their best work?

Those answers help narrow the search, compare costs more accurately, and focus on what the company actually needs.

Start with the possibilities 💭

An office search shouldn't simply recreate the office a company had before. It should find the environment that best supports how its people need to work now-and what is best for the company itself.

The right answer may be Workbar, or it may be a traditional office. But tour us first. The experience may change what you are looking for, or confirm that you know exactly what you need. Either way, you’ll go into the rest of your search better informed. I promise, it won’t be a waste of your time.

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