What do we do about the kids?

I noticed over the last few months that as I would talk with people about coworking, someone would ask about the idea of adding day care services.

I got very excited by the idea. Especially after reading about Cubes & Crayons in California. From a market demographic standpoint, it makes a lot of sense. More and more microbusinesses are parents, (ok, mostly moms), working out of their home.

You want your kid close, but not so close that you can’t focus on the business.

We were thinking the perfect solution would be to combine the the coworking facility with a day care service all in the same building.

Have a meeting? Need to focus? Just need some adult time?

Take your kid to the office and let the day care downstairs watch them while you get stuff done. No having to run across town or make special last minute arrangements.

It also seemed like a great opportunity because both my sister Greta and our friend Evie are going to be involved in the business. Both have a backgrounds in the education and day care industry, so it seemed like serendipity.

That said, we started cranking the numbers and it still looked pretty appealing.

Still, there are a couple things stopping us…

1) The licensing requirements - not too difficult, but still a hassle for a new business that is just getting off the ground.

2) More moving parts - we’re still proving the concept of coworking can work in NEO. Adding child care to the mix out of the gate would distract from our initial mission. At this point, I think it’s best we focus on our core objective and then look to possible expansion.

3) Is this absolutely necessary to make Office Space a success? - probably not. On one hand it does seem like a great accelerator and something which could get a lot of good buzz about it. But on the other hand, we feel the benefits of coworking are so pervasive that we don’t ‘need’ day care to get it off the ground. If it were THE thing the determined whether or not our facility would be a success, then we’d do it. But I just can’t make the case for complicating the business plan at this time.

So - for now - we’re not going to get into the child care game. We’re going to wait until we have established ourselves and have a customer base that we can listen & learn from. If they tell us this is something they want / need - we’ll go there.

I hope we get there soon, as I do think it will be fun. But one step at a time, one step at a time…

For now, we will at least reach out to local day care facilities and see if we can’t work something out. Perhaps get special discounted rates etc.

If you have any thoughts or advice on this subject, I’d love to hear your feedback. If you absolutely want us to do this now — let us know!
photo credit: Andrew Currie