Pizza Isn’t The Product
Part of the Coworking Confidential Series: Saying the parts unknown out loud
I was in Brussels this week.
Late evening, two beers already in, the edges softened just enough to stop overthinking. We ended up in this small pizza spot just off Place du Luxembourg.
It wouldn’t appear in any visitor guide. It wouldn’t go viral on TikTok chasing a trend. We’ve all been in a hundred places like it, but never like this.
We stood at the end of the counter, opposite the oven. No real seats. Just perching space and heat in your face. Plates and drinks landing wherever there was a gap. Elbows, shoulders, that low-level chaos that usually feels annoying, except here it felt right.
We were talking about everything and nothing at all, the kind of conversation that somehow feels more important than the ones you prepare for. The kind of conversation that starts at 9pm and somehow makes sunrise feel like it arrived early.
The pizza was good.
But it wasn’t the point.
What hit me was the room.
A small space filled to the teeth.
A mash of languages bouncing off the walls. French, English, Flemish, Italian, all at once.
People from the Assembly still in suits. Students. Tourists. Locals who looked like they’d done this exact dance a hundred times.
And it all felt effortless.
Not effortless like easy. Effortless like earned. Like a team that’s been through enough nights like this that the chaos doesn’t even register as chaos anymore. They moved without panic. They didn’t over-correct. They didn’t apologise for being busy. They just ran the room.
That kind of calm is never accidental.
It’s trained.
It’s a blade honed over hundreds of services until the edge holds.
The owner wasn’t cooking
That’s what really stuck.
He wasn’t pinned behind the oven, trapped inside the machine he had built. He floated. He watched the space like it mattered. He had time to greet people as they came in, like old friends. Quick hand on the shoulder, a nod, a smile, a line of a joke that landed because it wasn’t trying to land.
And you could feel what that does to a place.
People made space for each other without being told.
Staff moved fast without looking stressed.
The music sat in the right pocket, carrying the room without drowning it.
Nobody was hosting. Nobody was performing. The atmosphere just held.
That’s when it clicked.
Pizza wasn’t the product.
The product is the room
The collision of people who would never normally collide.
The feeling that you’ve stepped into a live thing.
The sense that something is happening and you’re inside it, not watching it.
You can’t fake that.
You can throw money at it and get close, but you can’t buy what that place had. It wasn’t designed. It wasn’t concepted. It was earned. Repeated. Reinforced. Protected. Night after night until it became its own gravity.
And that’s the bit that followed me home.
Because we do the same thing in our world.
We talk about coworking like it’s the product.
We talk about offices, desks, meeting rooms, phone booths, coffee, events.
But none of that is the product.
Those are just the reasons people walk through the door.
Coworking isn’t the product.
Offices aren’t the product.
Meeting rooms aren’t the product.
Build the room first
The real product is the room.
The energy when it’s full.
The feeling that something is happening around you.
The sense that you’re part of something without anyone forcing it.
The quiet confidence that the place can carry.
That’s what people come back for.
That’s what they remember.
Not the desk.
Not the layout.
Not the list of amenities.
They remember how the place felt on a random Tuesday when it was busy and alive and everything just worked.
That pizza place didn’t obsess over the thing it sold.
It obsessed over the rhythm of the room.
And because of that, the product took care of itself.
That owner could greet people like old friends because the operation underneath him was solid. The team weren’t scrambling. They weren’t drowning. They’d done the reps. They’d earned the calm.
That’s the lesson.
Build the room first.
Hone the blade.
Earn the effortless.
Because the pizza isn’t the product.
And neither is coworking.
They’re just what gets people through the door.
📍Lo Spuntino - 1050, Rue de Trèves 24, 1050 Ixelles, Belgium
Instagram
James Panepinto is Group Ancillary Revenue Manager for Clockwise Offices and UK Chair for FLOC (Future Leaders of Coworking)
We’re building something with Future Leaders of Coworking (FLOC) — for the people who care enough to change this industry from the inside out. For the next generation of leaders in Coworking.
If that sounds like you (or someone you know), reach out.