Opening a tabletop gaming store

>Do you have a million dollars?
I do. I have a wealthy family to help me invest along side me taking a business loan.
The cafe bit was just a comparison. Those places are 99% of the time just gaming centers with pc's.
The focus will be some sort of membership deal or renting tables/rooms.
Yeah I was thinking age limit 12 overall and like 15/16 for the fancier tables/rooms.
>Be prepared to lose money for the first year.
Yepp that's what I've heard so far.
>you don't know anything about running a business
Not a lot so I'll be taking some business classes at my uni before starting anything.
This sounds like exactly what I'm aiming for! My city doesn't have anything like this and like I said the biggest lgs is really lackluster. Glad to hear that it can work!

There's a little less than 2mil citizens in my city so if there's an accessible location I think I can attract enough people.

>Or do you need those sales revenues to stay in business?
The owner of my LGS says sales of snacks (chips and soda basically) are actually a decent chunk of his income. MTG also brings in a lot of business. Although he sells a lot of board games, that's actually pretty rare and you shouldn't rely on just the tabletop stuff to keep you afloat. Oh, and make sure that whatever you decide to carry has somewhat of a community around. Don't carry 40k if nobody plays it.

The board game cafe model works because the cafe model is already somewhat profitable.

My FLGS sells food and drink (and alcoholic drink, which pushes the average age and budget up, and reduces ), and while it has board games as a main thing they also run one-shots often - one of the guys there was saying how events are actually a big part of the good month they've had - and have rent-able rooms for D&D. Oh, and rent-able VR.
There's also Friday Night Magic, etc. - work with the companies, especially Wizards

>Don't carry 40k if nobody plays it.

Correction user, don't carry 40K / AoS unless a lot of people play it. GW has some of the worst practices in the Hobby Industry when it comes to how it treats small independent business owners. GW and their practices are a shitshow.

Keep the MTG players in a separate area.

Make a real business plan, so you at least have an idea how much money you'll lose, and how fast.

Reflect on the possibility that it will make you hate the hobbies you now love. Game stores often attract regulars with few alternatives for socialization.

I have a friend who's made a good go of it, and expanded his store and hired full time employees. No cafe part, but he sells comics, records, and board games in a young, hip part of a growing city. I think he's expanded into miniatures, and has one shelf of RPG stuff (99% D&D5 and Pathfinder). He's cultivated a clientele of young professionals with disposable income, rather than penniless neckbeards who just hang around and spend no money. While he has to carry all the usual moneymakers (D&D, popular board games, etc) I think he's got a good mix of new/indie stuff so people can browse and find stuff that might not have hit the big established stores yet.

In Korea you can eat instant noodles and even bring your own food in as long as it doesn't smell/isn't noisy. They have this corner with waste disposal units and a boiler. Despite expectations, the cafes are always very tidy, there's no grease on keyboards, no spilled drinks etc. And dealing with the waste doesn't seem to be inconveniencing the manager guy at all.

So, I guess if you have reasonable customers it's gonna be all okay.

In PC cafes, that is. People spend several hours there, playing LoL and Overwatch. Usually high school and university students.

Don't open a game store if you're looking to make money. Most game stores barely break even. A lot of them close after a few years. If you see a boardgame store that's older than 10 years, the owner almost certainly has a trust fund, a wealthy spouse, lots of investment properties, etc.

The only profitable board game stores that exist are the ones that sell lots of MTG cards. You do this by running lots of tournaments. And you do it as cheaply as possible. My local gaming store has a basement 2x bigger than the first-floor shop area, and it's always filled with rows of folding tables and sweaty Magic players.
A significant portion of your MTG income will come from teens and young children. You'll literally be a babysitter. Parents hand their kids some cash and drop them off at your store for a few hours. Be prepared to deal with bad behavior.

Board games will make you almost no money. You'll probably lose money just from stocking RPGs (most game stores in my area got rid of their RPG shelves years ago, and only stock a few D&D books).
Again, events are extremely important if you want to be at all profitable in these areas. D&D events, Pathfinder events, Netrunner tournaments, Catan tournaments, etc. You won't make as much money as an MTG event, but you can at least fill in the gaps between MTG events.

"Board game cafe" is an interesting business model, but it remains to be seen whether it's sustainable. On the other hand, a cafe is probably a safer bet than a game shop. So maybe be willing to pivot from "game cafe" to "cafe with nice tables" if the game thing doesn't work out?

Painting stations is a terrible idea. You'll be constantly bleeding money as tools and supplies break or get stolen. Business regulations will probably not be happy about having painting supplies and food in the same place. Insurance companies won't be happy either. Also, having "nice tables" next to open jars of paint sounds like a really bad idea.

Also, I should have said that this is all North America-focused advice. If you're in Japan or Korea, you probably don't have to worry so much about bad behavior, cleaning, maintenance, theft, etc. If you're in Germany, you can expect board games to be more popular/profitable. And so on.

My city has a board game /arcade game bar. It does pretty well. Booze always sells, more so if you give nerds a place they feel safe.

We have this thread every so often. The general consensus is that "Do what you love" is often superseded by "Never make your hobby your job."
You start up a game store, that becomes your life, managing everything from TCG licenses and tournaments to Adventurer's League to whatever else you have to set up. You'll find out everything you hate about the hobby you love in a hurry. It's just not worth it.

It's just like how I'm an economics major, but I'm pretty cold to economics. It's just my job. I try to get better at it, of course, but there's no burning passion.

Linguistics on the other hand, I can phase out of the real world for hours on end reading a random linguistics paper, but fuck if I turn it into my money farming tool. It'd kill all the joy.

I know of people who get successfully paid for what they love to do, but I think they are few and far between.

Room rental is an excellent business model if you’re adjacent to a university or some other location with a high concentration of individuals potentially interested in hobbyism. This also gives you access to a new set of individuals and potential players each semester (but can also lose you dedicated customers).

I wonder where you even picked up such knowledge. You tried your hand at it too, user?

Very very good input! All of it!
You've given me much to think about.
Ill probably come back with more specific questions in a few months after my business classes.
Thank you all!

>shooting porn in your FLGS's rented rooms.

On bad behavior, part of that is going to come down your force of personality and how well you can command respect. I would create some sort of standing "rules for acting civilized" and put it a high visability area. the final rule being to follow these or leave the store.

On RPG codex's, instead of stocking them, many, many, MANY, publishers now offer a teaser PDF. If you had a large screen tablet display, you could let people pick from a tastefully aranged list of options you will order, and they can get an idea of what is inside them. This saves you some overhead. Work with publishers to get a single free copy of something and agree to host a gaming night or session for players with it. Never deviate from this.

If anything, having a cheap batch of sellable tablets to hold PDFs is more beneficial than anything. Gaming books are no one's friend, but they are a draw and part of the spectacle.

Also, for fucks sake. If you are coming to the store to game at table, you have to spend some money, or rent the table. IT doesnt need to be any more expensive than a few cans of coke or something.

Have tables to push together, or multiple sizes, and charge accordingly.

>My real dream is opening a table to game store. An FLGS but with a commercial focus on gaming and having really cool tables. Like a gaming café but for wargames and rpg.

That sounds like a great way to find yourself bankrupt

Nobody wants to see your average gamer bumping uglies...and even the most desperate porn star would run shrieking from most LGS's.

user, buy yourself a robot cook with your tech background.

Alcohol license

Basically you're going to have to sell food on top of it