What the fika?! 🍰

Viktoria our Swedish Project Manager, kindly introduced us to fika – the key to slowing down in Sweden. The word derived from the Swedish word for coffee is a short event designed to take a pause from your day.

In Sweden it’s the law to have at least one daily fika, with some employers even offering two each day – sounds good to us!

Fika pronounced fee-ka is a moment in your day whether at work or at home where you pause to savour coffee or tea with a sweet treat, cake, pastry or even a sandwich. This is usually done with friends or colleagues, to have a chat about anything and everything. Did you know Sweden is one of the top consumers of coffee in the world but they don’t grab it and go, we spoke to Viktoria to find exactly how they do it in Sweden?

“When I worked in Sweden at another tech company, every Wednesday at 3 pm they ordered some kind of bun or cake for everyone. Managers would never book a meeting at 3 on a Wednesday – that would have been a BIG no-no. The great thing was that everyone flocked to this one space in the office and you would sit down and talk to people you might not come across in your normal working day. It’s great to find out more about your colleagues and other stuff going on in the company. Fika is a great way of building team spirit, friendship and company culture in a low-key kind of way.”

We have now incorporated Fika into the Ocasta weekly schedule. Our first Fika saw us chatting whilst enjoying Joe’s delicious homemade vegan cake.

Fika Challenge #1  💪

Most recently we’ve introduced fika weekly challenges, this week the Ocastars challenge is to hit 10,000 steps a day, until the next Swedish social. This is optional of course but it’ll definitely make us feel better about all the cake.