Tips for Starting a Board Game Cafe

Free advice! Normally you have to spend lots of franchise money on this, but I have no interest in franchising and consider myself lucky to do what I do and as such am happy to spread the experience. Bear in mind, our cafe is set in a downtown location in Victoria, Canada. What happened to us and works for us will not always be the same way you should do things where you are, but hopefully you can take something from it.

Handy dandy tips for running/opening a board game cafe.

1. Your job is to make sure people have a great experience in your cafe. Everything should stem from that. It’s not up to you to decide how they have fun, just to make sure that they have the best opportunity to do so. Great food, lovely staff, fun games (Game of Life, Cards Against Humanity or Agricola). Don’t push too hard but make sure they know you are available if they need you.
2. There are 7 billion different opinions on what a good game is and yours is just one. Ask questions to find out the best game for your customers and your game experiences are invaluable in helping them find it, but your personal opinion is really only relevant to one person.
3. So play as many games as possible of all types. While doing so, try think if it’ll work in your business and who for. Play or re-read the rules to Game of Life and Trivial Pursuit, you’ll be asked for help with those games far more often than the latest cool strategy game.
4. Open with a plan, but don’t be married to it. If something isn’t working, no matter how much you want it to, either let let it go or amend it. The game cafe business model is very young and it is still evolving.
5. When you are creating your plan, it is easy to get hung up on the small details (e.g. what do I do if a customer stays all day and doesn’t buy anything?), but don’t focus on those. Stay focused on the things that matter and that will be integral to the running of your cafe (scheduling app, food suppliers, food prep etc…). You will figure the small details out as you gain experience.
6. On the other hand be very aware and open to trying things you never thought of when you see the opportunity, they will present themselves, you just have to see them.
7. Games are fun and this is why you are opening the cafe right? Well it’ll only be a small part of the job, the usual stuff that comes with running a business will take up 90% of your time.
8. Your most valuable assets are your staff (they are people I know but I’m trying to sound businessy OK!). Their most important qualification is to be competent, lovely people. If they know a bunch a games then that’s a bonus (and if you create a nice environemnt they’ll learn as they go). They are the face of your business and will have the biggest impact on the people who come to visit you.
9. Trust them to do things, don’t try to micromanage them; it’ll a) drive you crazy, b) drive them crazy and c) inhibit them from coming up with ways to do improve things.
10. The library is there to be used. The games will get damaged and have to be replaced, accept that.
11. If you have the time/money prepare the most popular games for hard use. This is not so much to save replacement costs, but to improve the customer experience, it’s not fun to play with a ratty, falling apart game. On popular games we now:
    • sleeve all cards
    • tape the sides and corners of the lid and box to prevent spliting
    • varnish tiles
    • laminate all rules/cheat sheets
12. Remember 90% of your customer base will likely be casual/light gamers.
13. If you plan to charge an admission to play in your cafe, that’s your choice, if someone gets upset about it that’s their choice. But in the early days be clear to everyone that sits down about the fee as it will all be new to most of them.
14. The location is important. A few things to consider when choosing a spot:
    • Is it near students? They like Board Game Cafes.
    • Is it possible to expand? Many cafe’s have run out of space quickly.
    • Rent is a thing and will often scare you off of certain locations, but break the costs down by day. An extra $2000 a month is $65 a day, which is an extra 5 customers a day. If you think it’s the right choice don’t cheap out (too much).
    • Can you attract tourists?
15. You will need to make sure you give your customers some direction in the library. Employing people to teach and suggest games is the best way, but it is expensive early on. A well organized and labeled library can help, or just showing people a couple of appropriate games when they arrive.
16. Make sure you provide lots of sharable snacks.
17. Have good lighting and sound absorbtion. It can get very loud and it sucks to play games in a dark area.
18. Magic the Gathering is an excellent source of revenue but it’s hard to marry it with the casual crowd. Be careful if you choose to try and do both.
19. If you want to sell games, start with the most popular and don’t worry about the latest cool ones on BGG, most of that market has gone online.
20. Milkshakes sell well.
21. Oh yeah…lots of 2 player games…