It’s been over 5 years since we opened…dream job! Well I try to remind myself everyday how lucky I am, but like any dream job, once you get there it’s just a new set of problems and things to worry about (staffing, stocking, how does this place even exist and will I have a job next year?!?).
None of that was a thing almost 8 years ago when we started planning all this. I was working at a tech company and Jack (the other half of IBGC), your qwirky game store guy, was running Interactivity Games and Stuff, a store on Fort Street that sold novelties, puzzles and over time an increasing number of games. I came to Canada in 2005 and popped into his store in 2006, we chatted and he invited me to play games at the store after hours. Cut forward a few years and Jack mentioned his previous attempts at opening a board game cafe, usually when we all popped out to get beers from the liquor store or coffee from Starbucks. Wouldn’t it be great if we could play games and not have to leave all the time to get food and drinks? Unbeknownst to me, Snakes and Lattes, had just opened in Toronto, at that time I think it had about 40 seats and was the first of the modern game cafes. I wasn’t overly happy in my job at that point and was talking about it with my wife one evening and mentioned the board game cafe idea and she said I should just do it. That was it. We talked about it for a few minutes and made the decision. I’ve always been a great believer in the Yoda mantra, ‘Do or do not, there is no try!’ Next game night I told Jack I was going to do this and would likely put him out of business, but I would rather tell him to his face and he was old and probably ready to retire anyway…right? Within two weeks we were partners, not sure how that happened exactly, but it was something he had always wanted to do but at his age (he was 60 at that point) I’m guessing it had felt like a lot to do on his own, however with a middle aged stud like me on his side he was up for it.
We started looking for a spot. I pounded the streets for any available space. It’s hard as $%$& to find the perfect location. After a few months places that you thought were turdy a while ago looked amazing and I was gung ho to open in any of them, thankfully Jack’s (extremely) cautious nature prevented us from choosing them. Eventually we found a spot on Fort St. near the corner of Blanshard that we thought would work (see above). It had an area up front for retail and in the back enough space for 40 seats. We scratched out some numbers, felt we would make enough money to pay ourselves to get by and put in an offer. It was provisionally accepted so we drew up plans with the architects etc… and were ready to go. Our offer just needed the final dotting and crossing. We got it back from the landlord’s agent and they had made a couple of changes. Out of the blue they had just rented the space next door as a coffee shop, and part of that lease deal meant that we couldn’t sell coffee or food. ‘But, we’re partly a cafe?’ we pointed out, ‘it’s in the name of our business!?’ We had already sunk $10,000 in fees at this point and maybe they thought we we’re in too deep to back out. I was tempted, this had taken months and I had already quit my job in preparation, but thankfully Jack was too pissed off to accept the deal, so we walked away and had to start again. By the way it was Brown Bros who did that to us anyone looking to open a business 🙂
Back to pounding the streets looking for another vacancy (my wife had a pretty good job in case you were worried I wasn’t penniless at this point, it was annoying but my family weren’t starving). There was a place on Yates St. I had passed hundreds of times but always ignored because it was huge, almost 5000 sq. ft. Out of interest I looked it up online and noticed the plans had a big dashed line down the middle of it stating they were willing to split the place in two! 2500 sq. ft was way bigger than what we planned for but it was a possibility. We asked about the smaller of the two sides (currently our licensed half) and got a positive response, so we started planning. Making a layout for a business takes ages and a tonne of thought. There are a million regulations about what can go where as well as what must and cannot exist in your space. Jack did most of this on the downtime while running Interactivity Games and Stuff. We didn’t do architectural plans yet (lesson learned) but were ready to go. The landlord then changed his mind and felt that if he rented the side we were on, it would be impossible to rent the other side, so he wanted us to take that half! (insert Guinness World Record of expletives in one week here).
New plans, this time we had to get really creative because the back space wasn’t high enough, the area up the 3 stairs (fire code regulations I won’t bore you with, but it’s to do with their big fire helmets). Those pony walls between the tables at the back are there for a reason and it’s the big helmets! Landlords, they want a lot of money and can be total pratts. Thankfully ours is lovely, yes they made us change, but were willing to take a small cut in rent and once the lease was signed helped us by investing a lot in renovating the spot which was a shell at the time. By this point we were about 15 months in. It had been a grind and a half and were in a spot way bigger than we ever intended to have (almost 100 seats as oppossed to the 40 we initially bugeted for).
We started the renovation around March and finished in early October, it felt like forever. Jack likes to take things slow and tried to do as much himself to save money (he has had every job imaginable in his life including carpentry). To be fair almost all the money we put in was his, he had pretty much invested his retirement into the place and was naturally concerned about costs. I on the other hand hadn’t worked for quite a while and was desparate to get the place open. We had discussed the model we were going to go with, but final details still had to be agreed upon and he had his vision and I had mine. At this point Snakes and Lattes (S&L) had been open about 18 months and had already expanded. One other BGC had also opened in Toronto, but we were pretty much flying blind as to how to do this. I had read every review people had written about S&L, looked at every picture I could find and every news article on them. I used as many of their good ideas as I could, and came up with solutions to the things people would criticize them about. Initially our dream was to have a gamers paradise of people playing Catan, Agricola and Dominion. When I saw a tonne of 5* reviews of people saying how much fun they had playing Jenga and Monopoly again, my vision of the place started to change course. Luckily around that time we were fortunate enough to have an employee of S&L come to Victoria to take part in the Opera (he was also a singer) and he popped into Jack’s old store, in its last couple of months at that point. When we found out where he worked we invited him to play games with us for the two weeks he was in town. He gave us a tonne of input and made us change our mind about a whole slew of things we would have done differently if not for him e.g. Jack wanted our coffee operation to be done by an Aeropress, he politely told us that was utter madness. He also helped us get a much better idea of the type of customer we should expect and how to treat them (so many thanks JP).
With about 2 months to go and things dragging, it started to get tense. I was envisioning a Victoria hybrid of S&L, Jack was still more into a gamers paradise and was reluctant to give up selling his staples from his old store (puzzles, slot cars). I had heard that opening a business with a partner was similar to going through a divorce and I can tell you from experience that is pretty true. Except that this divorce would lead us to getting married for a minimum of 5 years (the length of our lease)! We argued constantly, Jack got mad, I got mad, I would go home and rant at my wife about how unreasonable Jack was, she would try and point out his view was just as valid and I would tell her to stop being reasonable and let me rant so I didn’t explode. But seeing rooms get built, walls getting painted and shelves go up was always cathartic as the end (or beginning) seemed that bit closer.
Then on October 11th, 2013, we we’re 98% ready to go and Jack decided to sell a puzzle (yes we had them then) and a copy of Hey that’s my Fish to Kim, my wife’s friend who randomly was our first customer. It wasn’t a grand opening, hell, I thought we were opening the next day and wasn’t even there, but Jack doesn’t worry about things like that. We didn’t have our food license yet, so we couldn’t sell food or drink. We had planned to get a liquor permit, but the BCLB had told us we couldn’t get one a couple of months earlier (we had been told over the phone earlier in the process we could), so we had to go with our backup plan…milkshakes. But we were open, we really had no idea how this was going to work exactly, but we were open…
TO BE CONTINUED….(Running a board game cafe)
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So if your thinking of opening a Board Game Cafe or any business, what should you take from this? One thing; there is a tonne of luck in any venture like this. We ended up in a place we didn’t want to be, doing things we didn’t intend to do (because a random guy had an Opera in town), making drinks we didn’t intend to sell because it’s really hard to get a straight answer out of the liquor board. Also to quote Harvey Dent; ‘The night is darkest just before the dawn.’ (like pitch black, but the light does come).
