Third Place Co.

How the clubs actually get started.

Nine guides pulled straight out of the three starter kits: the decisions that come first, the craft in the middle, and the rules that keep a table full once the novelty wears off.

All Run Club Beer Club Book Club
Two takeaway coffee cups on a low stone wall in the early morning sun, one still steaming, one half drunk.

Run Club

How to start a run club

Six decisions, one sitting. Everything else people agonize over is downstream of the fact that nobody has picked a corner and a time yet.

6 min read Matthew Chilinski
Two takeaway coffee cups on a low stone wall in the early morning sun, one still steaming, one half drunk.

Run Club

How to start a run club

Six decisions, one sitting. Everything else people agonize over is downstream of the fact that nobody has picked a corner and a time yet.

6 min read
A park path curving away in dappled morning light, a water bottle standing on the low wall beside it.

Run Club

How to plan a run club route

A good route is invisible: nobody ever mentions it. A bad one is the reason people do not come back, and they will not tell you that either.

5 min read
A pair of well-worn running shoes left on a doorstep in the morning light, laces loose and one tipped against the other.

Run Club

Waivers, sweepers and the ninety-second safety brief

The paperwork question every organizer asks in week one, and the six habits that matter more than the paperwork does.

5 min read
The near end of a long wooden bar table under one warm lamp, a jug of water and two small tasting glasses on it.

Beer Club

How to start a beer club

Nobody stalls because they do not know enough about beer. They stall because starting a club means booking a table, and booking a table means picking a night.

6 min read
Six small tasting glasses on a bar table, running from pale gold to nearly black, hands reaching in from either side.

Beer Club

How to build a beer tasting flight

Six glasses, four styles, one alcohol-free pour and one wildcard, in that order. Fix the format once and you never design a night again.

6 min read
A jug of iced water with lemon on a dark pub table, a tumbler of water beside it and one small glass of beer out of focus behind.

Beer Club

The ten house rules a beer club needs

The point of writing a rule down is not that it wins an argument later. It is that you get to point at a rule instead of having an opinion about somebody's night.

6 min read
Three mugs of tea, a teapot and two closed books on the corner of a small wooden table in the afternoon light.

Book Club

How to start a book club

Almost everyone has been in a book club that quietly stopped, and almost nobody knows what actually ended it. It is rarely the books.

6 min read
A short stack of well-thumbed paperbacks lying flat with their page edges to the camera, a cup of tea beside them.

Book Club

How to pick books for a book club

A pick is homework you assigned to your friends. Clubs die of bad picks far more often than they die of bad people.

6 min read
A closed book on the arm of a chair with a bookmark a third of the way in, a half-drunk mug of tea beside it.

Book Club

When half the club did not finish the book

A club that shames the people who did not finish has about four months to live. The fix is a rule, said out loud, and six questions that do not require anybody to have read the ending.

5 min read