If you are planning to start an indoor board game cafe business in your city, then you might want to read this article to have a better perspective on the business.
Business: Starting a board game cafe.
Business type: entertainment, sports.
Most suitable for: Anyone.
Last time we were talking about starting a table tennis club. We separated table tennis from other board games because of its popularity as a mainstream game. There are other board games like billiards, table foosball, carom, chess and even less popular strategy board games like legendary, labyrinth, Agricola which are not too much mainstream, but they are quite famous as leisure board games.
In many cities, people have started making clubs and board game cafes to offer such board games. These board game cafes not only offer board games, they also integrate their business with other small services like selling sports items and sports t shirts. This can be a very promising business as these games not necessarily have any age restrictions, thus creating a vast customer target.
How much does it cost me to set up a board game cafe?
It’s always better to start with a capital of at least 50000$ while setting up such a board game cafe. You may not need that much money but you always need to keep as much money for backup and it also depends on in which country you are living in, because a business that needs 10000$ in the US may cost only 3000$ in India. These board games do not cost more than 300$ per board. You can actually set up your club according to your capacity.
Who are my main customers and how do I make money?
Typically many board game cafe businesses are targeted towards children. But it does not mean that adults don’t visit your board game cafe. Retired elderly folks might become your loyal customers as well.
You can either charge an hourly fee for your customers or you can organize competitions and collect fee for organizing. Some of the board game cafe businesses lend these board games to their loyal customers and charge fees. Other board game cafes charge permanent membership fees.
What do I need to have to start a board game cafe?
# Place of business, obviously. The biggest expenditure you have to make should be on board games and advertising. So, if you don’t have a land, then it’s going to be a very costly work.
# Various board games and other indoor gaming machines, which you can either buy on Amazon, manufacturing company websites or retail stores. Try to focus on making your board game cafe as a collection hub of board games or you can focus on a single board game only. It is better to offer a wide variety of board games than to stuff your board game cafe with a single board game.
# Permits, that are necessary to set up your board game cafe. You can ask the local authorities about the procedures.
# May be some experts, who can teach others. Board games like chess obviously need coaches unless you are an expert chess player so that you can earn more by launching coaching classes for the children.
How do I advertise about my board game cafe?
Since your business is a regional business, you don’t need to bother international customers. All you have to concentrate is to build a regional customer hub. The ‘newspaper trick‘ can work very well on such a business. Other than that, you can start a Facebook page and share photos of people who come to play the strategy board games. Tag them with the photo so that they can share it with their friends.
They will definitely share such posts with their friends. There are many other awesome ways to promote your business, you can read the articles in the marketing category of this blog to choose the best marketing strategy for your business.
Some really awesome strategy board games
1. Chess and other such classic board games.
2. Dead of winter : a crossword game
3. Labyrinth board game
4. Carcassone
5. Space alert
6. kings of tokyo
7. Legendary
8. Sheriff of nottingham
9. Ticket to ride board game
These are some of the most famous strategy board games that any one would love to play. I just mentioned only the strategy board games because people love to play strategy board games.
Hope this article helps you. Please checkout other awesome business ideas mentioned in our blog. If you want to know about starting a plant nursery, click here . You can also checkout our other agriculture related posts here.