The right choice of bar furniture could help you tap into a lucrative daytime trade - flexible workers.
Flexible working is now a legal right in the UK, in the sense that employees are legally permitted to request flexible working conditions, and their employer is obliged to at least consider that request rather than dismiss it out of hand.
An infographic from accountancy software provider Sage shows that four million people in the UK now work primarily from home, and a further 1.8 million people would like to do so.
In Generation Y, 92% of people prioritise flexibility when choosing where to work, and 14 million people overall would consider flexible working to gain a better work-life balance.
While the office is still the default location for many jobs, there are millions of people working from home offices too - and with sensible bar furniture, your pub could become their 'third office'.
Coffee shops already cater for daytime workers, who might be allowed to plug in their laptop to charge, or to make free use of the Wi-Fi connection to get online.
And with Sage's research indicating that 63% of homeworkers are male, there's every reason to think pubs could attract some of these flexible workers of both genders to work from their premises.
The secret is simply to accommodate the customer's needs - a table of approximately desk height, with an ergonomically designed chair, situated close to an electrical socket if you are happy for them to plug in.
Versatile bar furniture will provide such a workspace, without looking out of place later in the evening when the typical daily trade of drinkers and diners arrives.
It's worth publicising the fact that you offer free Wi-Fi access too, as a worker-friendly atmosphere could help you to serve as a backup plan for homeworkers whose own internet connection cuts out unexpectedly, or who might be disrupted by other residents in their property and need a quiet place to escape to.
Even if your premises are not particularly quiet in the daytime, the general hubbub of a pub can provide good background noise to get some work done - and many people find that kind of random noise helps them to concentrate even better than silence.