KarunaNews Story

The Offline Club, a Dutch digital detox cafe where people pay to leave their phones at the door, nurtures moments of quiet introspection and encourages spontaneous conversations with strangers. The club, which has already branched out to multiple cities across the Netherlands, is now poised for an international launch. “People love it: they tell us this is exactly what they’ve been waiting for, they can’t believe it didn’t exist already,” says co-founder Ilya Kneppelhout. He and pals Valentijn Klok and Jordy van Bennekom opened their first phone-free hangout in Amsterdam’s Cafe Brecht in February this year, and drew 125,000 new Instagram followers in a month.