Faithful Springwise readers are undoubtedly already familiar with both being spaces and the pop-up trend. Now a new Dutch company is combining the two by offering pop-up work spaces in abandoned shops and vacant buildings.

The SpareSpace Foundation transforms empty inner-city shop and office buildings into temporary work spaces for copywriters, designers, artists and other young creative professionals. Featuring furniture by designer Jack Brandsma, SpareSpace equips each empty space with seven mobile units: four desks, one meeting table, a bar and a fold-out wall. All units are crates that can be folded in and out quickly and easily for instant setup; conversely, when the space is let or sold, they can be packed up and relocated to a new building within 24 hours. Spaces typically are available for several months, SpareSpace says; rental fees are EUR 150 per month to cover water and electric charges. Currently the project inhabits a vacant storefront at the Westerkade 24 in Groningen, the Netherlands. Beginning this week, however—to coincide with the Salone del Mobile international design event—it will also open another office in a vacant building at Via Ventura 6 in Milan, where it will stay through April 21. SpareSpace is a project by Nieuwe Garde, a Dutch creative agency.

By making use of space that would otherwise be wasted during the transition from one paying tenant to another, SpareSpace brings the urban office within reach of budding creatives who otherwise might not be able to afford it. The concept should also find favour among real-estate managers, since it keeps buildings from looking abandoned or barren—which can only help get them rented or sold. It's a win-win all around—a concept to emulate in cities around the world! (Related: Digital billboards revive empty storefronts.)

Website: www.sparespace.org
Contact: info@restruimte.nl

Spotted by: Core77 via RK

Wine may be enjoying new popularity, but that doesn't mean the average consumer isn't still daunted by the knowledge it takes to pick a bottle they'll like. We've written about several efforts to simplify the process, and now WineSide is taking a novel approach by offering wines packaged in sample-sized tubes.

WineSide offers both sweet and classic wines in patented, flat-base glass tubes with screw tops carefully engineered to protect the wines' flavour. The sweet wines—which include Sauternes and Muscat, for example—are available in 6cl tubes, while the Pomerol, Chateau Neuf du Pape and other classic wines can be purchased in 6cl or 10cl sizes. WineSide's collection represents a range of appellations and producers; tubes are available individually or by the box, which can be chosen to provide an introduction to a variety, year or region. Kicking off retail sales, the products are available exclusively at Colette in Paris this month.

In addition to giving consumers a new way to sample and discover wines, WineSide's tube format also promises to give vintners new tryvertising capabilities at relatively low cost. The French company's website is still under construction, but it says it is looking for distributors. One to get in on early!

Website: www.wineside.net
Contact: vincent@wineside.fr

Spotted by: Jean Friesewinkel

Consumers travelling by plane are increasingly faced with flight delays and cancellations, which is why a new start-up aims to help them spot potential delays. Much the way Farecast predicts whether ticket prices are tending up or down, Delaycast can now tell travellers the chance of encountering delays on a particular trip.

Delaycast was established to provide information about possible difficulties in flight itineraries and to give travellers realistic expectations about their travel plans. Unlike the historical flight performance statistics found on many travel sites, Delaycast uses predictive modelling technologies that model historical patterns in flight delays and project them into the future. Its Delay Profiles tool provides broad overviews of the best days, times and airlines to choose for a trip, based on selected airports, while its Delay Predictions tool provides information about delays and cancellations for specific airports, airlines, dates and times. The site does pretty well, too, with accuracy within 15 minutes of actual performance between 80 and 90 percent of the time, it says. The ad-supported site features direct links to travel planning tools like Travelocity and Priceline, and is free to use for consumers.

Delaycast launched into beta early this year, and currently includes just the top 60 US airports and 11 key airlines. It also makes predictions for trips only about four or five months into the future. Looking forward, however, it hopes to expand its coverage of airports and airlines, as well as adding predictions for security checkpoint wait times and updating predictions within 24 hours of a flight based on real-time conditions. Delaycast currently covers only the United States; who will bring this to the rest of the travel-weary world?

Website: www.delaycast.com
Contact: contact01@delaycast.com

Spotted by: Bjarke Svendsen

Last November, we featured Picnics on the Piste, a high-end catering firm that organizes gourmet meals for skiers right on the mountainsides of plush winter resorts in Austria, France and Switzerland. While affluent travellers increasingly seek out memorable experiences of the kind Picnics on the Piste offers, an even larger market exists for companies that can make it faster and easier for vacationers to buy everyday foods and household supplies for their holiday abode.

A new UK firm, Snowman’s Larder, is helping pioneer that niche in two neighbouring French ski resorts: Val d'Isère and Tignes. Customers can order online before they leave home, select a delivery time, then wait for their order upon reaching their apartment or chalet. To be sure, provisioning services have been around for a long time. Whether you’re vacationing in a time-share unit, motor home or sailing yacht, companies can set you up with food and supplies in just about any major resort area. But Snowman’s Larder is unique in several respects: the company says it can save travellers money by shopping in resort-area supermarkets instead of the higher-priced convenience stores at the resorts themselves, which shows how it has taken a business model skewed toward the affluent and adapted it to average vacationers. Snowman’s Larder’s also caters specifically to UK travellers, providing them with foods they’re familiar with.

Plenty of variations could work with this model, of course. If British food works in the French Alps, for example, kosher meals might just as easily work in the Colorado Rockies. The trick, in either case, is finding potential customers without spending much on marketing. Solve that issue and you might find yourself running a profitable company in the kind of location others can only dream of. (Related: Helping parents travel lighter.)

Website: www.snowmans-larder.com
Contact: info@snowmans-larder.net

Spotted by: Katie Rowen

Viewers of Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods television show know that some foods are not for the faint of heart. Catering to consumers who would like to experience such curiosities first-hand, online purveyor Edible offers an introduction to delicacies that may shock less adventurous eaters. Giant toasted leaf-cutter ants, mopani worms, reindeer pate and Thai green crocodile curry are among Edible's offerings, along with Lizard Wine, Civet Coffee and Monkey-Picked Tea Wash. A range of unusual or downright alarming products are available in six categories: Insectivore, Herbs & Spices, Aphrodisiac, Carnivore, Herbivore and Apothecary. Edible, which is based in the UK, provides detailed information about the origin of each product, including species and geographic data. Prices are as exclusive as the products themselves—GBP 12 for a tin of green crocodile curry, for example, or GBP 10.95 for a small bag of mopani worms.

Eating insects and other unusual foods promises not just a new experience for gourmet adventurers sick of the usual fare, but also a way to pick up some status stories that can be used to impress friends, family and the world at large. As consumers increasingly look for the newest, the rarest and superlatives of every kind, these types of offerings could really catch on both online and off. One to "hop" into in the gourmet world near you? Just be sure to follow Edible's lead in the branding department—chocolate-covered ants in bulk bins don't have quite the same appeal ;-)

Websites: www.edible.com/shop
Contact: info@edible.com

Spotted by: Bjarke Svendsen