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How to use 1,500 cans of canned coffee to build a cafe in your office【Photos】

Casey Baseel Sep 13, 2019
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A totally logical interior upgrade to SoraNews24 headquarters.

Suntory has two go-to marketing strategies for its Boss brand of canned coffee. One is to trot out Tommy Lee Jones, but the other is to promote Boss as the brand that understands how hard it is to be a working adult (or kaiju king), and that sometimes you need a break to recharge before throwing yourself back into the challenges of your profession,

Being the hard-working reporters we are, we go through a lot of canned coffee at SoraNews24 headquarters, So when our Japanese-language staff writer P.K. Sanjun put in our most recent restocking order, he figured he should get an extra-large quantity.

Like, say, 1,500 cans.

P.K. did, however, ensure a little variety by splitting the order evenly between Boss’ two newest varieties: Cafe de Boss Horoama Espresso and Cafe de Boss Funwari Cappuccino. However, seeing the company stash of canned caffeine sitting in cardboard boxes left him feeling less than satisfied. Suntory is, after all, billing its new cans of coffee as “the world’s smallest cafes,” promising all the flavor and relaxation you’d get sipping a cup of java in a stylish coffeehouse.

So, logically, the only thing to do was use our 1,500 cans of coffee to build an actual cafe inside the SoraNews24 offices.

▼ Logic in action

But anything worth doing crazily is worth doing well, and so P.K. didn’t want to just stack the cans up and hope they wouldn’t fall over, especially with his architectural project site being in earthquake-prone Japan. So instead, he decided to tape the cans together, alternating between the two varieties. He figured this would create an eye-pleasing pattern, and also a P.K.-pleasing excuse to get out of doing any real work for the day.

However, it quickly became apparent that this project was too big, both in ambition and physical size, for P.K. to tackle it alone. So he started recruiting as many of us as he could to help him achieve his vision. “If we all pitch in, we can get this done by quitting time!” he assured us.

…It ended up taking us three days.

P.K. decided against using cans for the floor, and also settled on a three-walled design, since his goal was to create an in-office break space, not somewhere where people can shut themselves off from the outside world and withdraw from society (Mr. Sato is in charge of those projects).

So instead, he brought in a couple of planks of wood he picked up at a home center and laid them on the ground. Then all that was left to do was add a chair and a table…oh, and of course, to chill.

▼ Before

▼ After

It wasn’t long until P.K.’s can cafe became the hottest place in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward…or, at least, the hottest place in the part of Shinjuku Ward that also happens to be the SoraNews24 offices.

▼ Satisfied customer Ahiru Neko likes the place enough that he doesn’t even mind that they don’t serve alcohol.

▼ Standing-room only

Unfortunately, P.K.’s can cafe is effectively a pop-up restaurant, since we’ll be gradually consuming the walls over the course of the next few months. In the meantime, though, we’re happy to have a new place to relax whenever we need a break from the pressures of covering such critical topics as falling in love with sexy anime-boy Colonel Sanders.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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[ Read in Japanese ]