As every Wellingtonian businessperson knows, a café makes a fantastic office away from the office. When I first started my business, my partner and I ran it from the flat we lived in at the time. With flatmates. It wasn’t exactly the ideal spot to meet clients, and so I often set up in a nearby coffee shop, and did the talking at one of their flatmate-free tables. Even now that we are grownups, and have actual premises, I still often decamp to the local café, and enjoy meetings over a drink.

Now, there are a few things that must be mastered before embarking on a café-style business rendezvous. I quickly learned that there exists a very strict etiquette:

-    Firstly, there is the issue of identification. You must be able to actually recognise the other person, which is tricky when you’ve never met, and trickier still when the café you are meeting in is full of lone coffee drinkers, waiting for their other businesslike half to arrive.
-    After accosting a few of the wrong people and figuring out who you are there to see, then you must work out who is buying who the drinks. There is no clearcut on this one I’m afraid, but upsizing your order right after your companion offers to pay, is a definite no-go.
-    And when that’s sorted, there’s the choice of beverage. You can’t have just anything you know, it is strictly tea, coffee or juice. You can’t have a hot chocolate or expect to be taken seriously with a milkshake, and apparently a triple vodka and lemon isn’t a goer either.

Anyway, I mention all of this because I’m in Auckland this week for meetings. Some are in coffee shops, others in fancy-schmancy offices. But it’s always the same protocol. One thing I’m becoming accustomed to is that in Auckland the cafes are never within walking distance of one another – there is a lot of drive-park-walk involved, which is making me consistently later than I even usually am.

Last week I avoided the potential to be late almost entirely. I had six meetings, one after the other. (I would have said ‘back-to-back’ but when I tweeted about this, Vaughn Davis of Y&R promptly replied, recommending me to schedule them ‘front-to-front’ instead, so we could see each other’s faces. If you know me well, you’ll know this joke would please me greatly. Anyway, I digress.)

I had to see six people for different things, and so made times for all six at the same café, to meet them all in a row.  The waitress was starting to give me funny looks by the end of the stream, and I had to make several toilet breaks to cope with all the appropriately-selected drinks I was consuming, but I considered it a success. It’s not often you can fit that many into one (long) afternoon.

So though I don’t actually drink coffee, I do like the business-café-culture here. It sort of levels everybody, gathered in a warm room, surrounded by harried waiters, trying to be heard above the din of a room talking business. Where do you do business outside the office? Are you more fancy than me, and have graduated to client dinners rather than just paltry coffee? Any tips of your own?