Behind Europe's Workday Club Craze

Anna Korsgren is excited about her lunch break. A blonde with dark eyes and hot pink lipstick, she works at a Stockholm brand communications agency called Dirty Butterfly, in a black-walled basement office. “I’ve always been a party girl,” she says. Luckily, she can now party—or at least dance—between client meetings and presentation slides, thanks to the monthly “Lunch Beat” events that have surged in popularity across Sweden. In the past few months, this daytime, hour-long nightclub has spread to a dozen cities in the rest of Europe, including Vienna, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Manchester. The originators of Lunch Beat encourage those who hear about it online to launch their own franchises, and there are plans to export it to Houston, Los Angeles, and New York.