August 11, 2025 • 25 mins
Join Josh on The Business of Gaming podcast as he visits with Alex, the community manager at Vigilante Gastropub & Games in Austin, Texas. This episode discussion includes a detail look at the business of running a gaming restaurant, how to create a memorable gaming experience, challenges over the last 8 years and how to balance revenue with guest's gameplay time.
More Information and Transcripts can be found at The Business of Gaming Podcast — Game Haven Guild
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hey, y'all.
Welcome to the Business ofGaming podcast.
I'm Josh with Game Haven Guild,and today we're sitting down
with Alex, the community managerat Vigilante Gastropub and Games
in Austin, Texas.
Opened since 2017, the communityhub for board gaming launched
after a successful Kickstartercampaign and has been serving
craft beer, cocktails, andhigh-quality pub food ever
since.
Can you tell us about thebackstory?
(00:22):
Any insight into what came aboutto deciding to set it up and why
set it up here in North Austin?
So, our owner...
He went around a lot ofdifferent places and took notes
about what he liked, what hedisliked, what a lot of places
typically do, and what thingsthat he wanted to see out of a
board gaming establishment.
A lot of the board gaming placeskind of defaulted to being like
(00:45):
a coffee shop with a shelf ofjust random games scattered
about.
And our owner, he wanted a morehigh class experience.
He wanted a place where peoplecould have like really good food
and cocktails and and likeplaying these games that he
loved and wanted to share withthe community.
And basically a place that wasjust a little bit nicer than
(01:09):
that little coffee shop feel.
The idea of the menu that wehave where the menu actually
goes and lists off all the gameswas just actually one of his
ideas because he hated the factthat you see a game on the wall
and you kind of have to judgeit, judge a book by its cover.
That is what he said.
And that kind of sucks becauseYou grab a random game that you
(01:30):
just kind of like the game, likethe art of it.
And then you open it up, youlook at the Roblox and you're
sitting there for half an hourand you're like, man, I don't
like this game.
It's like if you just had alittle menu that just described
what it was, it would save a lotof people's troubles and
frustrations with board gamingas a whole.
The reason why North Austin waschosen was honestly, you just
(01:54):
lived here.
Go back to the gaming piece.
When you come in and experienceit, you get this menu.
It's got a series of games onit.
How do you pick what games tohave in store and available for
people to play?
I, here as the gaming manager,I'm actually one of the head
game masters here in charge ofcurating our board game library.
(02:14):
Over the years that we've beenopen, we've actually taken
really strong data, what hasbeen played, what hasn't been
played, We note if things havebeen played multiple times, if
things don't get touched.
And almost yearly, we'll just doa little census of all the
games.
What needs to get called fromthe menu, what needs to get
(02:35):
pushed more, what copies we needmore of because of the games
that people are playing.
So we're taking really strongdata of what is actually going
out and what's not and seeingwhat people want and what people
don't want.
What are some games thatsurprised you with they have
nots?
been popular.
So, over here, I love boardgames.
(02:55):
I love my games likeTerraforming Mars, Dune
Imperium, like Scythe, a lot ofthose big games like that.
They do terribly here.
Absolutely terribly, becausethis, our clientele here are
all, I've played Monopoly, Uno,Risk, what do you got for me?
And I'm not here to show someonewho can barely understand what a
(03:20):
hand of cards is versus a deckof cards, an engine builder like
Terraforming Mars, you know?
So a lot of our games skewtowards the, you can learn this
game in five to 10 minutes andthen have a blast for like two
and a half hours, you know?
We want people to come out ofthis being like, wow, there's
more than just the classicHasbro games that we learned
(03:42):
when I was five.
So many people have come backwanting to learn more difficult
games because they basicallylearn for the first time.
It's more than just rolling diceand moving my pawn on a board,
trying to get onto boardwalk ifI'm lucky.
I love opening people's eyes tohow amazing modern board games
(04:03):
can be.
Any games that have really takenoff or something that surprised
you with how popular it is?
Yeah, absolutely.
So one of the biggest games thatactually really surprised me,
because I wasn't a believer whenwe first got it, is this game
called Decorum.
Decorum is a, it was originallya Kickstarter game, has gotten
(04:23):
kind of big, but essentiallyit's a cooperative puzzle game.
The way they sell it is that itis a game of passive-aggressive
cohabitation.
So the way I sell it on people,imagine you are a young adult
living with another young adulthuman for the very first time in
your young adult lives.
And as a young adult, you don'tnecessarily want to make your
(04:44):
roommate upset by any of thethings that you change in the
house, but naturally, you stillwant some things to be changed
in the house, so you just dothings passive-aggressively.
It's a puzzle game between youand up to three other players,
where you're basically movingthese pieces around the house
until a point where everyone ishappy, and the point of the game
is that you can't actually tellanyone what you actually want in
(05:05):
the house.
You have to respond topassive-aggressive statements
like, how dare you do that?
Oh, I love that.
That's fantastic, or...
You really just did that to thisroom here?
How dare you?
Something like that.
And honestly, a lot of peoplefind that puzzle fun.
And it's so weird.
People are like used to puzzles,right?
They already have that idea of,oh, a puzzle is something we put
(05:27):
pieces together like a jigsawpuzzle.
But something like this, wherethere's that talking back and
forth, it's like a cooperativepuzzle where there's also a
puzzle in the social element ofit.
And people really enjoy that.
And it actually has become oneof our biggest, like, games that
go out like every night.
In terms of the setup of the pubhere, there's a lot of play
(05:50):
space.
You've got a lot of four persontables.
You've got a lot of biggerbooths, six, eight, 10 plus size
tables.
You've also got these two backrooms here.
One of them seats about eight,one seats about 14.
10.
10.
How often are these back roomsAnd do you find a lot of people
coming in looking for a privateexperience or are most people
(06:11):
coming in and not even aware ofthese rooms as you've gotten
hidden pretty well back here?
A little column A, a littlecolumn B.
For people who don't necessarilyknow what we're about, I can't
tell you how many times I seefaces light up when they see the
bookshelf just open up and theysee two giant rooms in the back.
They're like, what justhappened?
(06:33):
there's a room there the entiretime like i can't tell you how
many times people just look andthey're like they do double
takes because they can't believewhat they just saw because of
how well we've hidden them inour game walls that they see us
going back and forth grabbingthe games from and they see
these rooms and they're like iwant to see that i want that
(06:54):
because there's that hiddenlittle bit of magic there that's
like kind of like narnia in asense where you open up the
little cupboard and you're justin a fantasy world and that's
kind of what we wanted to dohere uh right now we're sitting
in our gel hall this is kind ofour dnd styled room and like we
get a lot of dnd players hereour owner is a huge dnd nerd
(07:15):
loves loves dnd to death then umwanted the rooms to essentially
be the place where he wanted toplay dnd so the room we're
sitting in our gel hall Here areD&D minis, figures all about.
It kind of has that old schooltavern-y vibe.
Everything's very wooden andrustic.
My other room is what we callthe wizard room.
(07:36):
It's kind of like a wizardstudy.
These beautiful photos allaround.
Some stone statues and littlecabinets of potions and books
and stuff.
It really just takes you intoanother world.
So whether you're playing D&D orif you're just wanting to have a
little party...
Honestly, it's fun to get away.
(07:56):
Like there's that magic of justclosing that room and being in
another dimension, you know?
Can you tell us also about thetables outside?
There's a really cool mechanicfor calling a server over.
Can you walk us through how thatworks and how that was made?
Yeah.
So another thing our ownerreally liked or really wanted
was what we call the Accioserver button.
(08:19):
On all of our tables, there's alittle button that you can press
to that essentially turns on alight above the table that
signifies to a server that theyneed help.
Now, the reason why that's coolis because our owner at the
time, huge gamer, did not likegetting disrupted when they were
playing games.
As many of you know, if you'retaking a very complicated turn,
you don't want someone buggingyou and being like, hey, do you
(08:41):
want a refill on your soda?
While we're still going aroundhelping tables and stuff as the
servers do, it's honestly kindof nice just being able to focus
on your game when you're reallytaking those complicated turns
and you want to just focus onthat game experience because
again the games matter ourtables are set up with like
little cubbies like cup rollerscard holders little wings to
(09:06):
hold your food and your drinksand in order to maximize that
game playing experience there.
And those buttons kind of gointo it.
How about walk-ins versus eventsyou're doing?
What do events look like whenyou put them on and how big of a
role in the store does that playtowards building a community?
So we try to do events wheneverwe can, maybe like one or two
(09:26):
events a month.
The events that we do areprimarily community focused
because we want to put somethingonto the committee.
If I was going to be talkingfinancially and frank, Events
honestly aren't the biggestthing for us.
They're not that great, but welove doing them because we love
hosting those things for thecommunity.
For a period of time, we weredoing Dungeons& Dragons, which
(09:49):
is basically we were bringing insome drag performers to do
Dungeons& Dragons.
One of my other co-workers overhere had this idea because they
were a drag performer and theyloved D&D and they wanted to
combine their two passionstogether.
So basically, people did liveimprov D&D, and instead of
combat, they did dance numbersto represent them fighting.
(10:11):
And honestly, it was sick ashell.
Financially, it was not as goodas a normal day, but we loved
it, you know?
What else are you doing in termsof that community building?
So we're a big D&D bar.
Every Monday, we are closed tothe public for D&D.
We have a giant D&D game thatspans the entire restaurant.
We have like 16 dungeon mastersthat each lead a group of about
(10:34):
six to seven players.
And in D&D, they're here week toweek to week to week.
They are probably our strongeststressors because we see them on
a weekly basis.
And they love coming here toplay D&D.
It's super cool, these Mondaycampaigns.
They're in it for like three tofour months.
And then the way I like todescribe it, each table is its
own like Marvel movie.
(10:56):
And at the very end, the seasonfinale, they all meet up for a
big Avengers Endgame momentwhere everyone has to work
together to defeat Thanos.
And it's super dope as hell.
And everyone who's a part of it,because they're affecting the
world that affects every othertable around them too.
Oh my gosh, all these movingpieces.
They love it.
And like that in itself iscommunity.
(11:16):
Tuesday nights, we do somethingsimilar, except it's only half
the restaurant.
And generally, we're a place fornerds to come and congregate and
do the thing that nerds love todo, which is to play games.
In terms of getting the word outabout the pub, about the events,
things like that, anything inparticular work well and or not
(11:38):
work well around getting peopleinto the store?
We primarily use Instagram asour primary advertisement tool.
We've tried doing like Do512 andlike TikTok, Facebook.
We've tried different things,but it's hard to get noticed,
especially TikTok.
The problem with TikTok for usis that we have to put in man
(12:00):
hours and time in order to makethem.
And if they don't do viral, ifthey don't do well, man, that's
just a loss right there for verylittle gain.
Just the way like differentonline algorithms work.
Instagram has just always beenthe most consistent thing for
us.
As much as a lot of the staffwanted to do really fun TikToks
to keep up with the trends,that's a lot of time.
(12:22):
And people don't realize howmuch time and manpower it takes
even to do those fun TikToks andstuff.
So let's shift gears to therestaurant.
When you're both having eventshere and or cultural events
going on, I've seen you changethe menu many times and bring
special stuff.
How do you think about just thestandard menu versus then...
new items coming in.
So our standard menu is kind ofa set menu right now.
(12:44):
We'll change it every so often,but right now we're doing a
model where you purchase anentree and all of our entrees
come with a side.
This comes out to our oldermodel, which was what we used to
call the three plate deal, wherepeople could order just any
three items a la carte and get$3off.
You'd be surprised.
That's confusing for a lot ofpeople.
Because we had a weird conceptat the time, people didn't
(13:07):
really understand it.
They'd be like, Wait, I orderedall of these items.
Where are they?
And we were like, oh, we coursethem out for you to give you
more time.
And they're like, oh, I justwanted all my items at once
because that's what normalrestaurants do.
And while we were trying tofight that flow, we were just
like, you know what?
We'll just move to a morestandard restaurant model where
we have a full entree.
(13:27):
You get a side with it.
It's great.
Now there's not reallyconfusions on the whole ordeal.
So people get an entree, theyget a side.
We have some desserts as well.
As a homage to the old threeplate deal, people can get like
a selection of sides for aslightly cheaper price.
But yeah, that's kind of ourfood.
And we still have like a littlebit smaller plates just so that
(13:48):
people can maximize the gamingexperience here.
But we have been experimentingwith larger plates because a lot
of people are looking for morevalue for their buck.
And there's just a psychologicalthing where they see small
plates, even though it's thesame amount of food and they're
like, oh I'm not getting mymoney's worth versus seeing a
giant plate with the same amountof food and they're like oh this
(14:11):
is this is worth my value eventhough it's the same exact
amount of food it's really funnyone of our burgers we were
getting complaints for like ayear that it was like the burger
is too small we made one changethat was to like take the bun
off and leave it open andthey're like oh this is huge
what did you change about it wejust took the bun off it was
(14:32):
like that weird psychologicaleffect like I'm in charge of our
reviews here, and just lookingat our reviews, a lot of those
complaints just droppedovernight the moment that we cut
the bun off the top.
And that's just crazy to me, youknow?
So there's that littlepsychological aspect about how
the food is being presented, youknow?
(14:53):
So we've been playing aroundthese larger plates, even though
we could do them on the smallerplates that we do, but our
monthly specials that we do, wedo a different monthly special
every month, and That reallyhelps us experiment with what
people are willing to have attheir table.
If they're willing to take upsome of their gaming space for a
slightly larger plate in orderto have a meal that they feel is
(15:13):
more worth their dollar.
And it's been going really well.
People have loved these bigplates that we've been doing.
Right now, our monthly specialis called the Dragon Bao Keat,
which is two bao buns with twofried chicken cutlets.
some pickled cucumbers, somelettuce and some pickled peaches
(15:33):
that we put on top with what wecall a saiyan sauce, which is
like a chili mayo peach sauceand a side of dumplings right
there.
It's served on a big plate.
We could have easily have doneit in those small ones that we
do, but people love the bigplate and they were like, oh my
gosh, this is so much.
This is completely worth mydollar here.
(15:55):
And it's just like, it's morethan what we usually do.
I would never have thought oftrying to balance the plate size
versus that psychological piece,but it makes sense thinking
about it, I guess.
Yeah.
It's something that we've reallythought into because again,
we've had a lot of reviews beinglike, the food is too small.
It's too expensive.
And it's just like, it'sactually like comparing our like
(16:16):
stuff to other restaurants herein the Austin area.
Like we do similar, like our,our burger sizes are the same
amount as like similar placeshere in Austin and same deal.
It's just like, They justpresent it slightly differently.
So we were like, let's justchange how we present ours.
Most people come in, order ameal and a game.
Yeah.
(16:36):
How long are they typicallystaying in your restaurant for?
So, especially on the busy days,we tend to limit reservations
here to two hours, two and ahalf hours.
By default, people can pay forextended time, but because we
are still a restaurant, we don'thave the luxury of flipping a
table every day.
45 minutes to an hour.
(16:58):
That's part of the reason why wehave our game night fees to make
up for the fact that afteressentially an hour, people
aren't ordering food.
People always ask us, why do wehave that game night fee?
It's to cover tables from us notflipping tables.
It covers replacements of boardgames if they're getting dingy.
It goes into staff health careand like I have health insurance
(17:24):
because of the game night fees.
That's just a true fact for ushere.
It goes into a lot, and if we'renot able to flip the tables, we
have to make up that pricesomewhere.
I'd love for people to be gamingfor free all day, but as a
business, we can't have that.
Rent's never free.
No, rent's never free.
And people are like, wait, Ican't just sit here for seven
(17:46):
hours and play this game?
Unfortunately, no.
It's like, we're still arestaurant.
We're still a business.
We have to make some incomesomewhere, you know?
And I'm assuming that'ssomething you continually are
looking at of how long peoplestay versus how much to charge
for their game fee.
(18:06):
Mm-hmm.
I remember our owner at thetime, it was actually a real
sticking point to the localgaming community introducing, at
the time, a$5 game night fee.
Wow.
There was a lot of pushback onit because other competitors had
essentially...
Because people are used to boardgame cafes where you just pull
(18:28):
the game off the wall and youjust play the game at no charge.
But with us, because we are thatrestaurant and we need tables to
either spend more money or turninto another table in order to
make income, that game night feeis very important for us.
Introducing that$5 game mightbe, yeah, there was a lot of
pushback, but people just slowlyunderstood.
(18:50):
It was like, oh, this kind ofmakes sense.
They're fine paying for it aslong as the service was good
enough.
And we've actually seen othercompetitors in the area follow
similar models because it kindof makes sense.
It really helps keep up with allthe inventory because buying
board games isn't cheap.
(19:11):
Board gamers should know theyget expensive, especially if you
want a full 200-game library,trying to keep up with that has
to come from somewhere.
How often are you replacing thegames in your game library,
either from just something newor just wear and tear?
So every month we try tointroduce at least one new game,
if not more, because it helpskeep the library fresh.
(19:33):
It keeps people coming inbecause if people have seen our
menu over time and they'veplayed all the stuff that they
want to, maybe a new game willbring them in.
In terms of replacing games, wetry to do a check every...
essentially every time they goout, whenever we're teaching a
game and we notice the game isjust getting into a condition
where it shouldn't be going out,we always take a note of it so
(19:54):
we can place an order for more.
If we are charging the gamenight fee that we do charge, it
is kind of an expected amountthat our games are kept in
decent condition.
So looking over the last eightyears of this restaurant and
pub, what do you think haschanged the most in that time?
I think what changed the most isthat Honestly, the audience.
(20:17):
In the very beginning, it was alot of hardcore board gamers
that would come out because thiswas a novel idea.
Something like this had neverbeen done before.
But hardcore board gamersalready have the games that they
love.
They already know what theylike.
It slowly shifted to people whowant something unique and novel,
(20:38):
and we've kind of cateredtowards that, especially with
our game selection, our food,our drink.
People want novelty here.
And we have definitely cateredtowards that audience of like,
again, I've never touched aboard game before in my life.
What do you have?
And then they come back beinglike, hey, I've bought three
board games because of thisplace and I have become a board
(21:02):
game lover.
What else do you have for me?
Because I loved yourrecommendations before.
I'm going to keep loving yourrecommendations.
And honestly, that's a reallycool feeling because I have a
lot of irregulars that I've madeand met.
because of the recommendationsI've made to them.
So yeah, no, our audience hasdefinitely skewed towards newer
and people who are steppingtheir toes into the board gaming
(21:25):
hobby as a whole.
Have you seen a change or whatis the perspective on people
coming in and looking forparticular games?
Yeah.
Or are they coming in and justpicking out of the library
something they find when they'rehere?
We'll call them A, we'll callthem B.
We'll get people...
Who are intermediate hobbyistsof the board gaming world coming
(21:49):
into wanting to play a game thatthey've either seen good reviews
on, like Board Game Geek on, andthey're like, hey, do you have
this game?
I'd love to try it out.
Or I've seen this game on socialmedia, and I want to try this
out because they follow boardgame TikTokers who have made it.
And they're like, this gamelooks really fun.
Do you have this game?
And more often than not, we tendto because the games that get
(22:10):
popular online tend to be thegames that we have here.
So people come in and they get achance to try the game that
they've seen online and they'relike, this is great.
So we'll get people who come in,they have an idea of what they
want to play, but they're notnecessarily at the point where
they'll drop money on whateverthe next big thing is because
(22:31):
they want to try it out firstand we totally get that.
If you were to go back in timeand or talking to somebody who's
thinking about starting one ofthese in their town, what would
be the biggest piece of adviceyou'd give them?
Honestly, find someonepersonable with experience.
Experience in board gaming andsomething that sets us apart
(22:52):
from our competitors is our gamemasters here.
We have professional gamemasters that know our board game
library inside and out and areable to teach those games to
whoever comes in.
Myself, my other co-workers,we're all experienced game
masters who love teaching andspreading the joy of board games
(23:12):
to people.
It's one thing to have thegames.
It's one thing to have thelibrary.
It's another thing for a tableto feel like they're not dumb
for taking a game that theydon't know.
People don't like feeling dumb,which, shocker, right?
If you have people, you have tohave that right mix of people
who can teach something and alsoknow things, right?
(23:34):
A concept like this is honestlyreally hard and really hard to
find.
A place that will have someonesit down and teach you how to
play something while you'redoing everything within a short
period of time, because again,our expected stay is two to two
and a half hours.
If a game master can teach you agame and save you like 30 to 40
minutes of learning a rulebooklet, shoot, that's a game
(23:56):
breaker right there.
It's hard to find people withthat experience.
How do you train a game makerand or make a game maker?
Our game masters right here arejust tend to be people who have
been here the longest.
They've experienced our gamesbefore.
As a company, we invest time forpeople to learn games.
It is my personal thought thatif you work here at this
(24:19):
restaurant, you should know thegames that go out.
So we spend time, we spend hoursto train our employees on how to
play games, on how to sell someof these games, on how to
honestly enjoy the games andhave a more wider knowledge in
order to let a table know, hey,You should try this game out
(24:40):
because of X, Y, and Z.
So a lot of our training goesinto essentially what are board
games?
It's kind of as simple as that.
Like, it sounds like a sillyquestion, but like, honestly, a
board game in modern vernacularis a lot of things, you know,
and just giving people theknowledge of how to sell what a
board game is, is honestlyreally valuable.
(25:02):
Alex, thanks for spending thetime with us.
Absolutely.
Hey, y'all.
Welcome to the Business ofGaming podcast.
I'm Josh with Game Haven Guild,and today we're sitting down
with Alex, the community managerat Vigilante Gastropub and Games
in Austin, Texas.
Opened since 2017, the communityhub for board gaming launched
after a successful Kickstartercampaign and has been serving
craft beer, cocktails, andhigh-quality pub food ever
since.
Can you tell us about thebackstory?
(00:22):
Any insight into what came aboutto deciding to set it up and why
set it up here in North Austin?
So, our owner...
He went around a lot ofdifferent places and took notes
about what he liked, what hedisliked, what a lot of places
typically do, and what thingsthat he wanted to see out of a
board gaming establishment.
A lot of the board gaming placeskind of defaulted to being like
(00:45):
a coffee shop with a shelf ofjust random games scattered
about.
And our owner, he wanted a morehigh class experience.
He wanted a place where peoplecould have like really good food
and cocktails and and likeplaying these games that he
loved and wanted to share withthe community.
And basically a place that wasjust a little bit nicer than
(01:09):
that little coffee shop feel.
The idea of the menu that wehave where the menu actually
goes and lists off all the gameswas just actually one of his
ideas because he hated the factthat you see a game on the wall
and you kind of have to judgeit, judge a book by its cover.
That is what he said.
And that kind of sucks becauseYou grab a random game that you
(01:30):
just kind of like the game, likethe art of it.
And then you open it up, youlook at the Roblox and you're
sitting there for half an hourand you're like, man, I don't
like this game.
It's like if you just had alittle menu that just described
what it was, it would save a lotof people's troubles and
frustrations with board gamingas a whole.
The reason why North Austin waschosen was honestly, you just
(01:54):
lived here.
Go back to the gaming piece.
When you come in and experienceit, you get this menu.
It's got a series of games onit.
How do you pick what games tohave in store and available for
people to play?
I, here as the gaming manager,I'm actually one of the head
game masters here in charge ofcurating our board game library.
(02:14):
Over the years that we've beenopen, we've actually taken
really strong data, what hasbeen played, what hasn't been
played, We note if things havebeen played multiple times, if
things don't get touched.
And almost yearly, we'll just doa little census of all the
games.
What needs to get called fromthe menu, what needs to get
(02:35):
pushed more, what copies we needmore of because of the games
that people are playing.
So we're taking really strongdata of what is actually going
out and what's not and seeingwhat people want and what people
don't want.
What are some games thatsurprised you with they have
nots?
been popular.
So, over here, I love boardgames.
(02:55):
I love my games likeTerraforming Mars, Dune
Imperium, like Scythe, a lot ofthose big games like that.
They do terribly here.
Absolutely terribly, becausethis, our clientele here are
all, I've played Monopoly, Uno,Risk, what do you got for me?
And I'm not here to show someonewho can barely understand what a
(03:20):
hand of cards is versus a deckof cards, an engine builder like
Terraforming Mars, you know?
So a lot of our games skewtowards the, you can learn this
game in five to 10 minutes andthen have a blast for like two
and a half hours, you know?
We want people to come out ofthis being like, wow, there's
more than just the classicHasbro games that we learned
(03:42):
when I was five.
So many people have come backwanting to learn more difficult
games because they basicallylearn for the first time.
It's more than just rolling diceand moving my pawn on a board,
trying to get onto boardwalk ifI'm lucky.
I love opening people's eyes tohow amazing modern board games
(04:03):
can be.
Any games that have really takenoff or something that surprised
you with how popular it is?
Yeah, absolutely.
So one of the biggest games thatactually really surprised me,
because I wasn't a believer whenwe first got it, is this game
called Decorum.
Decorum is a, it was originallya Kickstarter game, has gotten
(04:23):
kind of big, but essentiallyit's a cooperative puzzle game.
The way they sell it is that itis a game of passive-aggressive
cohabitation.
So the way I sell it on people,imagine you are a young adult
living with another young adulthuman for the very first time in
your young adult lives.
And as a young adult, you don'tnecessarily want to make your
(04:44):
roommate upset by any of thethings that you change in the
house, but naturally, you stillwant some things to be changed
in the house, so you just dothings passive-aggressively.
It's a puzzle game between youand up to three other players,
where you're basically movingthese pieces around the house
until a point where everyone ishappy, and the point of the game
is that you can't actually tellanyone what you actually want in
(05:05):
the house.
You have to respond topassive-aggressive statements
like, how dare you do that?
Oh, I love that.
That's fantastic, or...
You really just did that to thisroom here?
How dare you?
Something like that.
And honestly, a lot of peoplefind that puzzle fun.
And it's so weird.
People are like used to puzzles,right?
They already have that idea of,oh, a puzzle is something we put
(05:27):
pieces together like a jigsawpuzzle.
But something like this, wherethere's that talking back and
forth, it's like a cooperativepuzzle where there's also a
puzzle in the social element ofit.
And people really enjoy that.
And it actually has become oneof our biggest, like, games that
go out like every night.
In terms of the setup of the pubhere, there's a lot of play
(05:50):
space.
You've got a lot of four persontables.
You've got a lot of biggerbooths, six, eight, 10 plus size
tables.
You've also got these two backrooms here.
One of them seats about eight,one seats about 14.
10.
10.
How often are these back roomsAnd do you find a lot of people
coming in looking for a privateexperience or are most people
(06:11):
coming in and not even aware ofthese rooms as you've gotten
hidden pretty well back here?
A little column A, a littlecolumn B.
For people who don't necessarilyknow what we're about, I can't
tell you how many times I seefaces light up when they see the
bookshelf just open up and theysee two giant rooms in the back.
They're like, what justhappened?
(06:33):
there's a room there the entiretime like i can't tell you how
many times people just look andthey're like they do double
takes because they can't believewhat they just saw because of
how well we've hidden them inour game walls that they see us
going back and forth grabbingthe games from and they see
these rooms and they're like iwant to see that i want that
(06:54):
because there's that hiddenlittle bit of magic there that's
like kind of like narnia in asense where you open up the
little cupboard and you're justin a fantasy world and that's
kind of what we wanted to dohere uh right now we're sitting
in our gel hall this is kind ofour dnd styled room and like we
get a lot of dnd players hereour owner is a huge dnd nerd
(07:15):
loves loves dnd to death then umwanted the rooms to essentially
be the place where he wanted toplay dnd so the room we're
sitting in our gel hall Here areD&D minis, figures all about.
It kind of has that old schooltavern-y vibe.
Everything's very wooden andrustic.
My other room is what we callthe wizard room.
(07:36):
It's kind of like a wizardstudy.
These beautiful photos allaround.
Some stone statues and littlecabinets of potions and books
and stuff.
It really just takes you intoanother world.
So whether you're playing D&D orif you're just wanting to have a
little party...
Honestly, it's fun to get away.
(07:56):
Like there's that magic of justclosing that room and being in
another dimension, you know?
Can you tell us also about thetables outside?
There's a really cool mechanicfor calling a server over.
Can you walk us through how thatworks and how that was made?
Yeah.
So another thing our ownerreally liked or really wanted
was what we call the Accioserver button.
(08:19):
On all of our tables, there's alittle button that you can press
to that essentially turns on alight above the table that
signifies to a server that theyneed help.
Now, the reason why that's coolis because our owner at the
time, huge gamer, did not likegetting disrupted when they were
playing games.
As many of you know, if you'retaking a very complicated turn,
you don't want someone buggingyou and being like, hey, do you
(08:41):
want a refill on your soda?
While we're still going aroundhelping tables and stuff as the
servers do, it's honestly kindof nice just being able to focus
on your game when you're reallytaking those complicated turns
and you want to just focus onthat game experience because
again the games matter ourtables are set up with like
little cubbies like cup rollerscard holders little wings to
(09:06):
hold your food and your drinksand in order to maximize that
game playing experience there.
And those buttons kind of gointo it.
How about walk-ins versus eventsyou're doing?
What do events look like whenyou put them on and how big of a
role in the store does that playtowards building a community?
So we try to do events wheneverwe can, maybe like one or two
(09:26):
events a month.
The events that we do areprimarily community focused
because we want to put somethingonto the committee.
If I was going to be talkingfinancially and frank, Events
honestly aren't the biggestthing for us.
They're not that great, but welove doing them because we love
hosting those things for thecommunity.
For a period of time, we weredoing Dungeons& Dragons, which
(09:49):
is basically we were bringing insome drag performers to do
Dungeons& Dragons.
One of my other co-workers overhere had this idea because they
were a drag performer and theyloved D&D and they wanted to
combine their two passionstogether.
So basically, people did liveimprov D&D, and instead of
combat, they did dance numbersto represent them fighting.
(10:11):
And honestly, it was sick ashell.
Financially, it was not as goodas a normal day, but we loved
it, you know?
What else are you doing in termsof that community building?
So we're a big D&D bar.
Every Monday, we are closed tothe public for D&D.
We have a giant D&D game thatspans the entire restaurant.
We have like 16 dungeon mastersthat each lead a group of about
(10:34):
six to seven players.
And in D&D, they're here week toweek to week to week.
They are probably our strongeststressors because we see them on
a weekly basis.
And they love coming here toplay D&D.
It's super cool, these Mondaycampaigns.
They're in it for like three tofour months.
And then the way I like todescribe it, each table is its
own like Marvel movie.
(10:56):
And at the very end, the seasonfinale, they all meet up for a
big Avengers Endgame momentwhere everyone has to work
together to defeat Thanos.
And it's super dope as hell.
And everyone who's a part of it,because they're affecting the
world that affects every othertable around them too.
Oh my gosh, all these movingpieces.
They love it.
And like that in itself iscommunity.
(11:16):
Tuesday nights, we do somethingsimilar, except it's only half
the restaurant.
And generally, we're a place fornerds to come and congregate and
do the thing that nerds love todo, which is to play games.
In terms of getting the word outabout the pub, about the events,
things like that, anything inparticular work well and or not
(11:38):
work well around getting peopleinto the store?
We primarily use Instagram asour primary advertisement tool.
We've tried doing like Do512 andlike TikTok, Facebook.
We've tried different things,but it's hard to get noticed,
especially TikTok.
The problem with TikTok for usis that we have to put in man
(12:00):
hours and time in order to makethem.
And if they don't do viral, ifthey don't do well, man, that's
just a loss right there for verylittle gain.
Just the way like differentonline algorithms work.
Instagram has just always beenthe most consistent thing for
us.
As much as a lot of the staffwanted to do really fun TikToks
to keep up with the trends,that's a lot of time.
(12:22):
And people don't realize howmuch time and manpower it takes
even to do those fun TikToks andstuff.
So let's shift gears to therestaurant.
When you're both having eventshere and or cultural events
going on, I've seen you changethe menu many times and bring
special stuff.
How do you think about just thestandard menu versus then...
new items coming in.
So our standard menu is kind ofa set menu right now.
(12:44):
We'll change it every so often,but right now we're doing a
model where you purchase anentree and all of our entrees
come with a side.
This comes out to our oldermodel, which was what we used to
call the three plate deal, wherepeople could order just any
three items a la carte and get$3off.
You'd be surprised.
That's confusing for a lot ofpeople.
Because we had a weird conceptat the time, people didn't
(13:07):
really understand it.
They'd be like, Wait, I orderedall of these items.
Where are they?
And we were like, oh, we coursethem out for you to give you
more time.
And they're like, oh, I justwanted all my items at once
because that's what normalrestaurants do.
And while we were trying tofight that flow, we were just
like, you know what?
We'll just move to a morestandard restaurant model where
we have a full entree.
(13:27):
You get a side with it.
It's great.
Now there's not reallyconfusions on the whole ordeal.
So people get an entree, theyget a side.
We have some desserts as well.
As a homage to the old threeplate deal, people can get like
a selection of sides for aslightly cheaper price.
But yeah, that's kind of ourfood.
And we still have like a littlebit smaller plates just so that
(13:48):
people can maximize the gamingexperience here.
But we have been experimentingwith larger plates because a lot
of people are looking for morevalue for their buck.
And there's just a psychologicalthing where they see small
plates, even though it's thesame amount of food and they're
like, oh I'm not getting mymoney's worth versus seeing a
giant plate with the same amountof food and they're like oh this
(14:11):
is this is worth my value eventhough it's the same exact
amount of food it's really funnyone of our burgers we were
getting complaints for like ayear that it was like the burger
is too small we made one changethat was to like take the bun
off and leave it open andthey're like oh this is huge
what did you change about it wejust took the bun off it was
(14:32):
like that weird psychologicaleffect like I'm in charge of our
reviews here, and just lookingat our reviews, a lot of those
complaints just droppedovernight the moment that we cut
the bun off the top.
And that's just crazy to me, youknow?
So there's that littlepsychological aspect about how
the food is being presented, youknow?
(14:53):
So we've been playing aroundthese larger plates, even though
we could do them on the smallerplates that we do, but our
monthly specials that we do, wedo a different monthly special
every month, and That reallyhelps us experiment with what
people are willing to have attheir table.
If they're willing to take upsome of their gaming space for a
slightly larger plate in orderto have a meal that they feel is
(15:13):
more worth their dollar.
And it's been going really well.
People have loved these bigplates that we've been doing.
Right now, our monthly specialis called the Dragon Bao Keat,
which is two bao buns with twofried chicken cutlets.
some pickled cucumbers, somelettuce and some pickled peaches
(15:33):
that we put on top with what wecall a saiyan sauce, which is
like a chili mayo peach sauceand a side of dumplings right
there.
It's served on a big plate.
We could have easily have doneit in those small ones that we
do, but people love the bigplate and they were like, oh my
gosh, this is so much.
This is completely worth mydollar here.
(15:55):
And it's just like, it's morethan what we usually do.
I would never have thought oftrying to balance the plate size
versus that psychological piece,but it makes sense thinking
about it, I guess.
Yeah.
It's something that we've reallythought into because again,
we've had a lot of reviews beinglike, the food is too small.
It's too expensive.
And it's just like, it'sactually like comparing our like
(16:16):
stuff to other restaurants herein the Austin area.
Like we do similar, like our,our burger sizes are the same
amount as like similar placeshere in Austin and same deal.
It's just like, They justpresent it slightly differently.
So we were like, let's justchange how we present ours.
Most people come in, order ameal and a game.
Yeah.
(16:36):
How long are they typicallystaying in your restaurant for?
So, especially on the busy days,we tend to limit reservations
here to two hours, two and ahalf hours.
By default, people can pay forextended time, but because we
are still a restaurant, we don'thave the luxury of flipping a
table every day.
45 minutes to an hour.
(16:58):
That's part of the reason why wehave our game night fees to make
up for the fact that afteressentially an hour, people
aren't ordering food.
People always ask us, why do wehave that game night fee?
It's to cover tables from us notflipping tables.
It covers replacements of boardgames if they're getting dingy.
It goes into staff health careand like I have health insurance
(17:24):
because of the game night fees.
That's just a true fact for ushere.
It goes into a lot, and if we'renot able to flip the tables, we
have to make up that pricesomewhere.
I'd love for people to be gamingfor free all day, but as a
business, we can't have that.
Rent's never free.
No, rent's never free.
And people are like, wait, Ican't just sit here for seven
(17:46):
hours and play this game?
Unfortunately, no.
It's like, we're still arestaurant.
We're still a business.
We have to make some incomesomewhere, you know?
And I'm assuming that'ssomething you continually are
looking at of how long peoplestay versus how much to charge
for their game fee.
(18:06):
Mm-hmm.
I remember our owner at thetime, it was actually a real
sticking point to the localgaming community introducing, at
the time, a$5 game night fee.
Wow.
There was a lot of pushback onit because other competitors had
essentially...
Because people are used to boardgame cafes where you just pull
(18:28):
the game off the wall and youjust play the game at no charge.
But with us, because we are thatrestaurant and we need tables to
either spend more money or turninto another table in order to
make income, that game night feeis very important for us.
Introducing that$5 game mightbe, yeah, there was a lot of
pushback, but people just slowlyunderstood.
(18:50):
It was like, oh, this kind ofmakes sense.
They're fine paying for it aslong as the service was good
enough.
And we've actually seen othercompetitors in the area follow
similar models because it kindof makes sense.
It really helps keep up with allthe inventory because buying
board games isn't cheap.
(19:11):
Board gamers should know theyget expensive, especially if you
want a full 200-game library,trying to keep up with that has
to come from somewhere.
How often are you replacing thegames in your game library,
either from just something newor just wear and tear?
So every month we try tointroduce at least one new game,
if not more, because it helpskeep the library fresh.
(19:33):
It keeps people coming inbecause if people have seen our
menu over time and they'veplayed all the stuff that they
want to, maybe a new game willbring them in.
In terms of replacing games, wetry to do a check every...
essentially every time they goout, whenever we're teaching a
game and we notice the game isjust getting into a condition
where it shouldn't be going out,we always take a note of it so
(19:54):
we can place an order for more.
If we are charging the gamenight fee that we do charge, it
is kind of an expected amountthat our games are kept in
decent condition.
So looking over the last eightyears of this restaurant and
pub, what do you think haschanged the most in that time?
I think what changed the most isthat Honestly, the audience.
(20:17):
In the very beginning, it was alot of hardcore board gamers
that would come out because thiswas a novel idea.
Something like this had neverbeen done before.
But hardcore board gamersalready have the games that they
love.
They already know what theylike.
It slowly shifted to people whowant something unique and novel,
(20:38):
and we've kind of cateredtowards that, especially with
our game selection, our food,our drink.
People want novelty here.
And we have definitely cateredtowards that audience of like,
again, I've never touched aboard game before in my life.
What do you have?
And then they come back beinglike, hey, I've bought three
board games because of thisplace and I have become a board
(21:02):
game lover.
What else do you have for me?
Because I loved yourrecommendations before.
I'm going to keep loving yourrecommendations.
And honestly, that's a reallycool feeling because I have a
lot of irregulars that I've madeand met.
because of the recommendationsI've made to them.
So yeah, no, our audience hasdefinitely skewed towards newer
and people who are steppingtheir toes into the board gaming
(21:25):
hobby as a whole.
Have you seen a change or whatis the perspective on people
coming in and looking forparticular games?
Yeah.
Or are they coming in and justpicking out of the library
something they find when they'rehere?
We'll call them A, we'll callthem B.
We'll get people...
Who are intermediate hobbyistsof the board gaming world coming
(21:49):
into wanting to play a game thatthey've either seen good reviews
on, like Board Game Geek on, andthey're like, hey, do you have
this game?
I'd love to try it out.
Or I've seen this game on socialmedia, and I want to try this
out because they follow boardgame TikTokers who have made it.
And they're like, this gamelooks really fun.
Do you have this game?
And more often than not, we tendto because the games that get
(22:10):
popular online tend to be thegames that we have here.
So people come in and they get achance to try the game that
they've seen online and they'relike, this is great.
So we'll get people who come in,they have an idea of what they
want to play, but they're notnecessarily at the point where
they'll drop money on whateverthe next big thing is because
(22:31):
they want to try it out firstand we totally get that.
If you were to go back in timeand or talking to somebody who's
thinking about starting one ofthese in their town, what would
be the biggest piece of adviceyou'd give them?
Honestly, find someonepersonable with experience.
Experience in board gaming andsomething that sets us apart
(22:52):
from our competitors is our gamemasters here.
We have professional gamemasters that know our board game
library inside and out and areable to teach those games to
whoever comes in.
Myself, my other co-workers,we're all experienced game
masters who love teaching andspreading the joy of board games
(23:12):
to people.
It's one thing to have thegames.
It's one thing to have thelibrary.
It's another thing for a tableto feel like they're not dumb
for taking a game that theydon't know.
People don't like feeling dumb,which, shocker, right?
If you have people, you have tohave that right mix of people
who can teach something and alsoknow things, right?
(23:34):
A concept like this is honestlyreally hard and really hard to
find.
A place that will have someonesit down and teach you how to
play something while you'redoing everything within a short
period of time, because again,our expected stay is two to two
and a half hours.
If a game master can teach you agame and save you like 30 to 40
minutes of learning a rulebooklet, shoot, that's a game
(23:56):
breaker right there.
It's hard to find people withthat experience.
How do you train a game makerand or make a game maker?
Our game masters right here arejust tend to be people who have
been here the longest.
They've experienced our gamesbefore.
As a company, we invest time forpeople to learn games.
It is my personal thought thatif you work here at this
(24:19):
restaurant, you should know thegames that go out.
So we spend time, we spend hoursto train our employees on how to
play games, on how to sell someof these games, on how to
honestly enjoy the games andhave a more wider knowledge in
order to let a table know, hey,You should try this game out
(24:40):
because of X, Y, and Z.
So a lot of our training goesinto essentially what are board
games?
It's kind of as simple as that.
Like, it sounds like a sillyquestion, but like, honestly, a
board game in modern vernacularis a lot of things, you know,
and just giving people theknowledge of how to sell what a
board game is, is honestlyreally valuable.
(25:02):
Alex, thanks for spending thetime with us.
Absolutely.
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