Instinct develops the metaverse of Café Joyeux
PRESS RELEASE
4 Jul 2024
Monte Estoril, 4 July 2024.
Instinct developed the first metaverse space for Café Joyeux, the first family of inclusive and solidarity-driven cafés-restaurants, present in France, Portugal, Belgium, and the United States.
From now on, anyone can access the Café Joyeux metaverse via the website joyeux.pt/metaverso. All that is required is to create an avatar or enter anonymously with a random avatar. The welcome reception to the space is provided by équipiers, young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, played by real équipiers, who share the Café Joyeux mission.
In this virtual experience, visitors can order a coffee, chat with other regular visitors, make a donation, discover products available for real-world orders, or even access the virtual store where they can purchase Joyeux merchandise for their avatars.
This metaverse is available in Portuguese, French, and English, accessible through computer, tablet, smartphone, or virtual reality glasses.
“Today, on the first anniversary of Café Joyeux in Cascais and celebrating the positive transformation of society towards inclusion, it’s the perfect moment to launch an innovation in which Portugal is a pioneer: Café Joyeux’s arrival in the metaverse,” explains Filipa Pinto Coelho, President of the VilacomVida Association and CEO of Joyeux in Portugal. “Constantly innovating and capturing the attention of all age groups, especially the younger ones – future professionals – is extremely relevant to our mission of promoting a society that is more open to differences and capable of including everyone.”
The aim of Café Joyeux’s entry into the metaverse is to reach younger generations, who are highly active in virtual worlds, and raise awareness of workplace inclusion through a positive experience.
For Sandra Lucas Ribeiro, Managing Partner at Instinct, “supporting Café Joyeux is, for us, supporting society to be more enlightened, tolerant, and responsible in true social inclusion. What Café Joyeux and the VilacomVida Association have achieved in such a short time is remarkable, bringing a new perspective on difference that deserves to be amplified in virtual worlds as well.”
In addition to Café Joyeux, Instinct also developed the metaverse spaces for MEO, MEO Empresas, Fundação MEO, RFM, and Expresso.
About Instinct:
Founded in 2012 in Lisbon, Instinct was one of the first innovation agencies in Portugal with a user-focused (Human-Centered Design) approach, studying companies of the new economy, such as Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Uber, Tesla, Airbnb, Netflix, SpaceX, etc. With the mission of helping large companies innovate with conviction, responsibility, impact, simplicity, and elegance, Instinct has embraced significant projects with companies like MEO, Sonae Sierra, Via Verde, Media Capital, Fidelidade, among others, and has assisted the VilaComVida Association and Café Joyeux this year in identifying behavioral segments and developing various innovative solutions.
About Café Joyeux:
Café Joyeux is the first family of solidarity and inclusive cafés-restaurants, born in France in 2017, employing and training people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. A pioneering concept brought to Portugal by the VilacomVida Association in 2021, when it opened its first café-restaurant on Rua de São Bento in Lisbon. Currently, this association operates a total of four Café Joyeux locations in Lisbon and Cascais and manages a Zara Home For&From store located at the Freeport Lisboa Fashion Outlet in Alcochete, directly employing a total of 43 people with different disabilities.