(Photo: Courtesy of MEET on Chrystie)
Let’s face it, office meetings are the soul-sucking worst: they’re a dull grey-hued stream of stale pastries, pretending to pay attention and vague lower back pain. If visiting Don Draper’s office makes you wish you could brainstorm amongst whiskey carts and midcentury mod couches, then you might want to take your next conference call at MEET on Chrystie.
The new meeting pad lives behind an unassuming glass door, past a wall of neon-pink pipes and up a flight of stairs to a sprawling second floor space at 195 1/2 Chrystie Street. Marc and Sara Schiller are the husband and wife team who conceived of the out-of-the-ordinary meeting experience. “That mini croissant, the brown-beige room,” Marc ticked off, leaning against the gleaming, graphic-print countertop in the space’s kitchen. “This is to play against every experience you’ve ever had and turn it on its head.” They say they host everyone from Fortune 500 and consumer product agencies to healthcare companies, though the names of these businesses are kept hush-hush.
At just under 5,000 square feet, the meeting space is a bright, open, vividly colorful series of rooms curated to the nines. Art from Marc and Sara’s private collection hangs from hammered tin and intricately papered walls, lit by a mix of track lighting, Favourite Things lamps and a Tobias Wong rubber-dipped crystal chandelier. Oriental rugs ablaze in gold, red, blue and green are artfully splayed out on the hardwood floor. Mixed-media work lays in wait around every corner, set into walls and bookcases, or amidst cozy groupings of soft, comfortable furniture.
Suzy McCormick, Sara Schiller and Marc Schiller (Photo: Hannah McCarthy)
MEET began in the Schillers’ Wooster Street loft apartment, where Marc, who is also the founder and CEO of Bond Strategy and Influence, chose to host clients because he and Sara knew they could customize the space to their taste. They opened MEET at the Apartment on Crosby Street (now closed) as an experiment of sorts — to gauge whether businesses would bite. “At that time,” Sara pointed out, “we really created the category.” Six years later, the pair realized they needed a bigger and more adaptive space.
If you’re thinking that Chrystie Street is an unusual spot to host your business meetings — you’re right. The new MEET location, which officially opens this week, was once home to 20 small artist studios, though Sara indicated that the owner hadn’t been inside the space in years. Marc and Sara chose the space because of its location — and their love for the LES art scene — though it isn’t likely to host starving artists again anytime soon. A complete buyout for a day will run you $7,000, and the hourly rate is $250. Small change for someone popping over from, say, Ian Scharger’s condo tower.
Sure, the company boardroom is free. But MEET is there for when you can afford to be taken care of. Suzy McCormick, Head Concierge, is responsible for anticipating a client’s every possible need. “Pick your poison, what do you need done?” she says. “The answer is always ‘yes,’ pretty much.” She orders food, changes flights, gets you the computer charger you forgot and even cures your hangover. “I had a group last week and they went out big on Thursday night and were really hurting and I was like, ‘Do you want me to get some bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches delivered for you guys?’”
What you’re shelling out for is that personal touch - the professional who will notice that glassy, grease-craving look in your eyes while you pretend the fruit and yogurt parfait is doing the trick.
