Hygge’s coworking empire growing with new 20,000-square-foot building that’ll have our city’s largest Not Just Coffee

On April 1st, Hygge will open the doors to its fourth coworking space in FreeMoreWest. The new location will be on Jay Street just west of Uptown, near Lucky Dog Bark and Brew.

At 20,000 square feet, it will be Hygge’s largest undertaking by far.

Why expand? There’s no more space in Hygge’s current locations. “We are at 100 percent capacity on everything,” Hygge founder Garrett Tichy said.

This will be Hygge’s second location on the west side — the other is off Remount Road. Their first location is on Hill Street by Bank of America Stadium, and the most recent is at Camp North End.

“We’re 75 percent full already,” Garrett told the Agenda.

Rates are similar to the other locations. Flex starts at $124 per month, and offices range from $600-$1,200 per month. And yes, everything is still month to month with a 30-day notice.

Hygge Jay St. will also have a full natural-light studio which you can rent at $75 per hour (same model as the podcast studio). “The goal is to lower the bar for people that need quality photography space, make it easy.” Their current podcast studio is regularly booked and has somewhere between 40-50 regular shows recording.

A total of 50 private offices will be the centerpiece of the Hygge Jay St. location, and that’s for a reason — there’s tremendous demand.

Offices will range from small one-person spaces to enough space for a 16-person team. Several startups that launched in smaller offices at other Hygge locations will be moving to larger digs at the new location — including Skipper and UNYQ.

“We have enough space to start to help teams grow,” Garrett told me.

I’ve known Garrett for five years. We met as coworking tenants when he was running an SEO company. I couldn’t be more impressed by his ability to change directions and grow Hygge. It’s a cool entrepreneurship story.

New partnership: Hygge Jay St. will be home to Not Just Coffee

“We’ve been interested in a West Side location for a while now, but we also love interesting and unique collaborations,” said James Yoder who owns Not Just Coffee along with his wife, Miracle. “This project moved fast for us, but the chance to work with with Garrett and Hygge was something we didn’t want to pass up! I respect the brand he’s built a lot.”

This will be NJC’s sixth location. The menu will be similar to that of their Dilworth location — expect a light food menu, beer and wine but no cocktails (at least not initially).

NJC will be open to the public, you don’t need to be a Hygge member to grab coffee and hangout in NJC’s 2,800 square foot space.

“This will be by far our largest Not Just Coffee location, and we want to really open it up as an extension of Hygge and encourage working from there. We won’t have the same challenges with laptop real estate that we do in some of the smaller spots.”

Not Just Coffee will open slightly later than Hygge — they’re targeting an April grand opening.

“James and the entire NJC team understands how important the human element of a business truly is,” said Garret. “Yes, the coffee is important, but the team who works the bar and patrons of the shops are what actually makes it all come together.”

With the addition of Hygge Jay St., Hygge will have 76,000 total square feet under management here in Charlotte. Their membership base is almost at 500 and this new location has the potential for another 300.