WFH: Work From Here

Why everyday places have become a fundamental part of the modern workscape

By Matthew Kennedy · Insight · 24 March 2026

The café on the corner. The hotel lobby with the good chairs. The bar that doesn't mind if you stay. These aren't workspaces by design. They're workspaces by default. And that shift - from where we're told to work to where we choose to be - is quietly reshaping the entire workscape.

Work hasn't stopped happening in offices. It's just no longer limited to them. The shift isn't about remote work - it's about mobility. The freedom to choose spaces that suit the day, the task, the mood.

This evolution has created a new, fast-growing category: Casual Workspace.

A casual workspace is an everyday venue used informally as a place to work. Think cafés, bars, hotel lobbies, bookstores, gyms.

While these places weren't designed for work, they were designed for people. For comfort, conversation, creativity, interaction. They offer atmosphere, familiarity, and freedom. Light structure without pressure. Social interaction without obligation.

Unlike traditional workspace categories, this didn't start with amenities or ergonomics. It started with people, laptops, and a preference for environments that feel good. And it's emerged organically to become one of the most important layers in the modern workscape.

Why it works

Choosing where you work creates structure - psychological, spatial, and emotional. It brings intention back to something that, for many, become formless.

That matters now more than ever. As technology enables more fluid ways of working, constant connectivity brings a new kind of pressure: when work can happen anywhere, it starts happening everywhere. Working from home can make that worse - collapsing boundaries and cutting people off from everyday social rhythms.

Casual workspaces offer something different. Separation without isolation. Work embedded in lifestyle, but with edges. A sense of when work starts and stops.

It's not work bleeding into life. It's work finding its place within it.

For some, casual workspace is a supplement - an alternative to home or office, a convenience on the move. For others, it's the default. Either way, it's now a real, growing, and desirable part of how work gets done.

The Challenge

There's an irony at the heart of the traditional workscape: many corporate offices and coworking spaces are trying to feel more like hospitality venues while hospitality venues already exist in abundance… and most of them sit empty throughout the day, staffed and ready, struggling to make ends meet.

These everyday spaces are naturally becoming de facto workspaces. Not through strategy, but through behavior. Not by design, but by demand.

And that's exactly where the challenge begins.

You know the feeling. You've found a café you love - the coffee's good, the vibe is right, it's ten minutes from home. But today there's no seat by the outlet. Or the Wi-Fi is crawling. Or you're three hours in and the guilt of nursing one flat white is starting to outweigh the productivity. So you pack up, find somewhere else, and start the process again.

Casual workspace works until it doesn't. Its inconsistency makes it unreliable - based on luck rather than certainty. And that uncertainty has a cost: the mental load of never quite knowing if the next hour will be productive or wasted.

For venues, the picture is just as unclear. Long stays, small spends, awkward moments when staff have to decide whether to ask someone to order again or let it slide. There's no rulebook for this.

But you can't solve these problems by turning cafés into coworking spaces. Their appeal is their authenticity, informality, and freedom. Strip that away, and you lose what made them work in the first place.

That doesn't mean they can't evolve.

The Opportunity

Most people aren't looking for office-grade amenities. They're looking for the right environment and just enough certainty to relax into work.

These venues already lead with atmosphere, service, and human experience. They're already distributed, available, and desirable. With the right enhancements, they can meet rising demand without losing what makes them great.

Just enough structure. Just enough certainty. Not so much that it kills the vibe, but enough to remove friction and make the experience work at scale.

Casual workspace is one layer of a broader workscape. Alongside hosted spaces, utility spaces, corporate HQs, and the home, it forms part of a system that works best when the layers connect - when you can move between them based on what you need, not what's available.

That's what we're building toward with fluxo: making it easier to find, access, and move between these spaces, so you can build a work week that actually fits your life. Not locked into one model. Not left to figure it out alone. Just the freedom to work from here - wherever here happens to be.