Murphy, North Carolina is a lot of things — a mountain gem, a tight-knit community, an outdoor adventurer's playground, and increasingly, home to a growing wave of remote workers, freelancers, and small business owners who have traded city traffic for Appalachian sunrises. But for a long time, it was missing one thing: a place to actually work.
The Problem With Working From Home in a Beautiful Place
Remote work sounds like a dream until you're on your fourth video call of the day from your kitchen table, the dog won't stop barking, and you realize you've been wearing the same hoodie for three days. The flexibility of working from home is real — but so is the isolation, the distraction, and the creeping feeling that your living room has become your office, your break room, and your entire social life all at once.
Murphy had coffee shops. Murphy had restaurants. But Murphy didn't have a dedicated space where a remote worker could show up, plug in, focus for four hours, grab a craft beer when the work was done, and maybe run into someone interesting along the way. That gap is exactly what Wagner Worx was built to fill.
The Third Space Idea
Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term "third place" — the space beyond home (first place) and work (second place) where community actually happens. Coffee shops, barbershops, parks, and corner bars have historically served this role. They're where you bump into your neighbor, where ideas get exchanged, where strangers become regulars and regulars become friends.
The modern remote worker needs a third place that does double duty: somewhere you can genuinely get work done and genuinely decompress. Somewhere with fast enough wifi to run a Zoom meeting and good enough beer to celebrate closing a deal. That's the concept at the heart of Wagner Worx — not just a coworking space, and not just a bar, but a coworking bar.
Why Murphy?
Murphy sits at the southwestern tip of North Carolina, tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains where the Valley River meets the Hiwassee. It's the kind of town that draws people in and keeps them — with its walkable downtown, stunning natural surroundings, low cost of living, and a community that still feels genuinely neighborly.
In recent years, Cherokee County has seen an influx of remote workers, digital nomads, and transplants from larger cities who discovered Murphy and never left. They needed infrastructure for a modern working life — not just high-speed internet at home, but a professional-grade work environment they could step into when home didn't cut it. Wagner Worx is that infrastructure.
Built for the Way People Actually Work
Wagner Worx is located at 104 Tennessee Street in the historic Mill Building in the heart of downtown Murphy. The space was designed around how real remote workers, freelancers, and small business owners actually spend their days:
- A quiet table with the best wifi in Murphy for heads-down focus work
- Private meeting rooms for client calls, interviews, or team check-ins
- Office services — printing, copying, scanning, faxing, laminating, notary — for the practical stuff that still requires paper
- Craft beer, wine, specialty coffee, and soft drinks for fueling creativity and celebrating wins
- A welcoming, laid-back atmosphere where showing up in work clothes or hiking gear is equally acceptable
Community at the Core
Wagner Worx hosts a regular lineup of community events — Game Night on the 2nd Tuesday, Writers Workshop on the 3rd Tuesday, and Peacock Viewing Parties every Saturday. These aren't just programming; they're the point. A third space only works if it brings people together, and building community in Murphy is as important to Wagner Worx as any cup of coffee or coworking membership.
The name itself is a nod to that spirit — a place where work and life converge, where the line between professional and personal is intentionally blurred in the best possible way.
An Invitation
If you've ever tried to work from a coffee shop that was too loud, felt stuck in the isolation of a home office, or just wanted somewhere to land when you're new in town — Wagner Worx is for you. Walk in. Find a table. Order something good. Get some work done. That's all there is to it.
We're open Monday through Friday, 1–8 PM and Saturday 11 AM–6 PM. No reservation required for open seating. Membership options available for regulars. Come see what we built.