- Workers in Auckland’s CBD seek coffee mostly on Thursdays between 11am and 12pm, according to research.
- Chris Dibble, from JLL, used Google data to analyse café popularity, noting a post-Covid return of workers.
- The data helps businesses strategize, revealing busy times and a decrease in CBD retail vacancy rates.
Workers in Auckland’s CBD need a coffee fix outside the office the most on a Thursday between 11am and 12pm, according to new research supplied to OneRoof.
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Chris Dibble, the head of research and strategic consulting at JLL, took a dive into Auckland’s café culture by leveraging popularity data from Google, looking at 22 cafes.
He found the results reflected the return of workers that had been taking place since the arrival of Covid in 2020 cleared out city centres.
Thursday was the most popular day of the week for coffee overall but Wednesday and Fridays were not far behind, with Mondays and Tuesdays quieter.
The morning run was also busy with commuters grabbing a coffee as they neared their workplace between 7am and 9am, paying anything from $4.5 to $7, depending on size, shots and different milks.
Dibble told OneRoof the research evolved out of questions from clients around the busy times of the coffee sector, and businesses could use the data to plan and strategize.
“We thought we’d delve into it a little bit more and we used Google’s wonderful information to assist us in trying to come up with an idea about how we actually rank some of the days in the week that are the busiest, and then from those busiest days, what times are the busiest as well.”
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Behavioral patterns could be helpful for coffee drinkers as well: “If you want to have the vibe and the buzz of all the people around you then those are the days and the time that you want to show up, but if you’re looking for maybe a quieter, relaxing period of time to enjoy your coffee perhaps those aren’t the days and the times to turn up.”
The popularity of Thursday from 11am could be down to people going out for a mid-morning team or client meeting, said Dibble.
“After a few hours of working through your emails and what you need to do for the day it provides that sort of opportunity to catch up.”
The quieter days early in the week could reflect people working from home, he surmised.
“Or perhaps they are staying in the office and working through things and utilising the office’s coffee machine.”
Early mornings are a good time to beat the queues in Auckland CBD. Photo / Getty Images
Friday was also a day where people worked from home, but the results showed plenty of people were still frequenting CBD cafes on the last day of the working week.
The results indicated there were busy times across the Auckland CBD and that reflected what was happening across the office market.
“We’ve definitely seen from a vacancy perspective there’s more demand for office space but particularly in that high-end sector and so where we’ve got that aggregation of high-end, high-quality properties that’s where we’re seeing definitely a lot more frequency at cafes, and also that popularity throughout the week.
“Some of those retailers that are very closely aligned at the bottom of large CBD office premises, those are the ones who are pretty active not only in those Wednesday and Thursday periods but throughout the week as well.”
Knowing people patterns was important for businesses in terms of maximizing their operations and profits.
“The popularity of cafes is an interesting piece of analysis and hopefully it does assist retailers but ultimately the interesting component for us is looking at the volume of activity that is starting to come back into the Auckland CBD.
“We’re seeing our CBD retail vacancy rate starting to decrease. It’s sitting at around about 7.3% and it was up at 8.6% in mid 2022s, so more positive activity and people coming back into the CBD through the return to office where people are seeing the massive benefits in training and security and culture and the like.
Office workers at lunchtime in Wellington. The city’s retail sector has come under pressure in the CBD. Photo Mark Mitchell
“Cafes are definitely starting to see that benefit and, hopefully, more and more as the year goes on and the economy improves – hopefully, it’s not just a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday but also on Monday and Tuesday as well.”
In Wellington, the news from the CBD has been grim with reports of road works and businesses closing, but Tommy’s Group CEO Ben Castle said a deal involving Mitre 10 moving into the former Warehouse site in Tory Street was cause for optimism.
Castle, who brokered the deal with Sam McIlroy of MC Property, said Wellington had been struggling on a number of fronts.
“There are pockets that have lost a lot of confidence, of course, but I mean the public sector has been slashed and we’ve got an increasing rates issue and obviously interest rates and inflation have affected everyone, and we’ve got a council that have been under fire for a long, long time, so I think when that’s all put together it doesn’t make great reading.”
The Mitre 10 deal was a good indicator Wellington was turning a corner, especially in the retail space, he said.
“Mitre 10 is a home improvement institution, and has been for a long time, so for them to want to move into the central city shows there must be a demand.
“It’s a bit of a chicken and egg, isn’t it? If there’s nothing in town then no one will come, but, equally, if no one comes into town they won’t be there either so both have to move at the same time, in a way, so if we create the environment where people want to come into town it’s more attractive.
“I think the retailers and the businesses have decided ‘we can’t wait any longer. We’ve been waiting for people to come back into town but, of course, there’s nothing there so let’s give them something’.”
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