About us


Jake, co-founder, events


Piotr, co-founder, head barista

Oxford Living Wage.jpg

We are an Oxford Living Wage employer

About us

Common Ground Café and Shared Workspace is a social enterprise pop-up in the Oxford University owned building in Little Clarendon Street, which was formerly Barclays Bank.

Set up by Jake Backus, Managing Director of Empathy Sustainability, VSM at Linacre College Oxford, cycle coach and sustainability champion and Piotr Drabik barista extraordinaire & trainer and coffee machine mechanic with the support of Magnus Baker, bar tender, barista, furniture maker and mountain biker.


Our key positioning is around having somewhere where students and others can study, with free power and wifi, and where people can stay as long as they like.  (*We encourage you to purchase something to eat or drink hourly in order to keep us afloat!)  We are not profit maximising.

Because we have a relatively low rate of sale, it means that we can spend more time with each person to make them feel welcome.  This is why we say that we have the “best coffee experience in Oxford”.

We are a calm space that connects the community, and we have morphed into a social space where people can come and do their own thing.

Our values are excellent coffee, kindness, courtesy, sustainability and creativity. 

Our social purpose is to support the community and student mental health.

“Less lonely than studying in your room, quieter than a café, and more hipster and connected with society than the college library.”


  We connect people at their own speed.    No pressure.     No requirement to do anything.*