How Much Space Is Required for a Micro Market?

It’s easy to fall in love with the concept of a micro market. Providing the people in your building with delicious, convenient snacks, drinks, and even made-to-order meals is an amenity that will be loved by all. And, when you work with InReach, operating the market is easy, allowing you to continue to focus on other things. 

One common hesitation regarding the addition of a micro market to an office is the space required. Despite the word “micro,” some business owners or managers worry that they simply won’t have the square footage available for such an amenity. 

We are here to put those concerns to bed. The InReach team will be happy to collaborate with you to make a micro market work in whatever space you have available. The finished product will be an open, welcoming space that tends to draw people from throughout the building to refuel, socialize, and get more out of their day. Take a moment now to contact us and learn more. 

The Space Required for a Micro Market

Living Up to the “Micro” Title

As a starting point, think for a moment about the name that has been assigned to these versatile office features. Micro markets can be just that—small spaces in your office that have a big impact on how your people work and interact. So, you don’t need a ton of available space in the building to bring such a market to life. As long as you have a small space that you would like to assign to the project, you can work with InReach to make it happen. 

With that said, it is entirely possible for a micro market to utilize a larger space in order to offer more products and serve more people. That’s what is so exciting about this type of space; it can be completely customized to precisely match your needs and expectations. 

To provide an answer to the title question of how much space you need for a micro market, there is no hard-and-fast rule for the square footage required. In some cases, a small break room can be converted to a micro market, while other companies will choose to use more of their square footage to build a spacious market that can welcome many employees at the same time. 

Assessing Your Options

Now that you know you won’t need a huge swath of office space to create a popular micro market in your building, it’s time to start looking at specific sites that could serve in this capacity. An obvious starting point is any current break room or lounge spaces you might have in place. If one of those isn’t really living up to its potential currently, turning it into a micro market is a natural upgrade. 

In addition to utilizing spaces that are already reserved for breaks, you can look at any open space in your office that sees a lot of traffic throughout the day. If there is a space near an entry to the office, for example, that isn’t already being used for another purpose, that could serve nicely as the home for your new market. You want this feature to be positioned within the office in such a way that as many people as possible will be able to use it conveniently.

Customization Is Key

The right micro market layout for one office might not be suitable for the space you have available. This is not a one-size-fits-all type of project, as the needs of the specific office need to be taken into consideration. 

Part of the process that the InReach team goes through in developing a micro market is getting to know both your space and your people. Understanding what you need on a deep level will allow us to design a market that not only contains ideal food and drink options but also serves as a comfortable, inviting place to gather and engage with one another during the workday.

Getting the Product Selection Just Right

Just as the design of each micro market is a bit different, so too is the product mix that will be placed in the market. At InReach, we already know what kinds of items tend to be popular in these markets—hand-crafted sandwiches, fresh salads, snacks, coffee, etc.—but each office has its own culture and preferences. 

The way your micro market is stocked will be adjusted regularly as time passes to dial in the mix and make sure everyone is finding things that they will enjoy. If you have noticed that your people are regularly leaving the office to go find snacks and drinks off-site, those trips out are likely costing your employees quite a bit of time that could otherwise be used to make progress on important projects. When you bring a micro market into the fold, your employees gain time, convenience, and satisfaction.

Technology Plays a Starring Role

It’s immediately evident when you step into a micro market designed by InReach that plenty of technology has been used to make this an advanced, easy-to-use feature. There are a number of ways to make a purchase in one of our markets, including contactless payment methods, an intuitive kiosk, or using a phone. On the back end, smart stocking tools are enabled to make sure the inventory is always topped off and the best products are always available when and where your people expect to find them. 

Bring Relationships Back to the Office

When you think about whether or not to dedicate some of the space in your office to a micro market and where that space might be, it’s worthwhile to think about just what you’ll be getting out of the space once the market is completed. A micro market that is open for business isn’t just going to be a place to pick up some food or a tasty beverage—it is going to be a place that promotes organic connections between your people. 

If you have been feeling like the employees in your office are increasingly isolated from one another (which is a common feeling in the modern world of work), a feature like a micro market can drum up a fresh round of socialization. This is far more effective than any manufactured “team building” activities you might explore because it happens naturally as people start to spend more and more time in and around the new market.

Let InReach Take the Lead

It should be clear by now that you can set any concerns about space to the side when contemplating the addition of a micro market to your building. Whether you have a large area you’d like to use to create a spacious market or you would like to tuck this feature into a smaller spot that gets plenty of foot traffic, we’ll make it happen. The first step is simply to contact the InReach team to talk about your needs and learn more about how we can serve you. Don’t wait another day to get started!