Luis Vuitton's Cafe & the Move from Events to Watering Holes (Cafe Society Quick Bite #5)
Plus The SupperClub on Clubhouse today with Sofar Sounds Founder Rafe Offer & Chase Tucker of Peloton.
Cafe Society is Maxwell Social’s weekly magazine on the intersection of community and society — an anthropological look at the underpinnings of what makes the world tick, written by David Litwak (@dlitwak) and the Maxwell team. Subscribe here and tune into our weekly Clubhouse, The Supperclub on Clubhouse.
Today we’re going to discuss how Louis Vuitton’s launching of a restaurant reflects a shift in how we gather our communities.
“There is a tendency to get our yearly dose of community outside our communities . . . Burning Man, Coachella, The New Yorker Festival, Art Basel are escape valves to our normal community-free weekly existence, and brands that realize there is an opportunity to provide community on a daily basis instead of a yearly basis will earn a cult following.”
But before we get started, a quick update on last week’s Clubhouse — our first ever The SupperClub on Clubhouse was a rousing success, 600+ listeners live at one point, so we’re doing another one today, and will make it a weekly thing at 4pm EST on Thursdays. Today we’re going to be speaking with Rafe Offer, the founder of Sofar Sounds, the pop-up concert in your living room phenomenon on Inclusive Exclusivity, along with Chase Tucker from Peloton, Mark Emil Hermansen from Empirical and Tomos Lovett from WithOthers, with a few more cohosts to be potentially added.
We’re going to discuss the themes we touched on in previous articles like Sofar Sounds & inclusive exclusivity, SoulCycle’s mistaking exclusivity for community and delve into how you scale an intimate and unique experience while leaving room for the creativity of local artists with Rafe. Tune in at 4pm EST here, and read to the bottom for updates on learnings from last week.
But onto the weekly update —Luis Vuitton is launching a cafe on the 4th floor of their "Maison" in Osaka, Japan in yet another example of what we’ve termed In-Person 2.0, joining the crew of brands that have started realizing that cultivating community requires more engagement than a once a year conference.
A few months ago we wrote about the next generation of in-person brand experiences:
We’ve noticed an acceleration of a trend, what we’re calling In-Person 2.0. In-person 1.0 was conferences and meet-ups, In-Person 2.0 is permanent physical spaces that serve as homes for the brand’s community, as brands realize that community is their biggest moat.
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If you’d like to cohost with us, get in touch!
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And check out some of our deeper dinner discussions like why Soho House has had trouble scaling its community (and why we think miniclubs are the future), Possibility-As-A-Product: Superbad, Clubhouse & the Inciting Incident, Gatekeepers & The Wing, Inclusive Exclusivity, Sofar Sounds & Self-Cancelling Greek Life, Ford Bronco, Blockbuster & Nostalgia Porn For A Simpler World and Amsterdam’s Radical Anarchist White Bikes & Community Hobbyists.
Have a great rest of the week!
David (@dlitwak) & The Maxwell Team
