A business fantasy turned reality: How two school friends built a thriving games café
Good morning, welcome to the latest edition of Entrepreneur NI – a newsletter which drops into your inbox of a Sunday morning, showcasing how founders created some of the best businesses in Northern Ireland – big, small and everything in between. If you haven’t already subscribed, you can do so here..
This week, I spoke to Aaron Bushby, one half of a dynamic duo, who alongside good friend Harry Singer, set up Roast & Roll – a tabletop games café – in Banbridge almost one year ago. This is their story of how they continue to make it a viable, thriving business. Enjoy..
Halfway through a Masters degree in astrophysics and working in a supermarket, Aaron Bushby decided he was going to put it all on hold and open up a tabletop games cafe in Banbridge!
He enlisted the help of good friend, Harry Singer, and together the duo opened up Roast & Roll – a café specialising in games such as Dungeons and Dragons and Warhammer – which has really welcomed a loyal community of followers over the last 11 months.
Aaron’s initial intention of returning to his studies has dissipated somewhat as he continues building upon his dream of entertaining people.
“One of the best things about the café is seeing people laughing, having a good time; knowing we have provided a place for that to happen and seeing friendships grow between different people,” Aaron enthused.
And it was their own friendship – and unique qualities – that really made this idea the perfect fit for the dynamic duo.
Aaron explained: “Harry and I have been friends from Sixth Form. I knew he was into the same things I was into but he also had hobbies I wasn't too familiar with. I reached out to him; it was a bit of a long shot but he seemed very interested.”
It helps that Harry is an excellent baker too! That became a major part of the business as Aaron explained.
“I myself have a nut allergy and you go to cafés, you can rarely find anything that's nut free, but being able to have it all baked in house was great – and reassuring,” he said.
“All of our tray bakes are being made in here by Harry, fresh from scratch, so having that is just a massive extra side of the business. That wasn't an initial consideration…the café was secondary to just having a place for people to hang out, with entertainment as the main goal of it.
“Eventually the café side of the enterprise started to become a lot more prevalent in the discussion. I enjoy my coffee, so does Harry, and with Harry's baking and everything, it was a no brainer – it's been a huge boost to the business. We do actually get people coming in just for a coffee, or for a tray bake and that's wonderful because it’s not what we were expecting at the start.”
Aaron and Harry don’t look upon the café as a way to make their fortune – they are delighted to have turned it into a viable business that sustains the two of them in jobs they are proud to have created for themselves.
Initial discussions were all about how they would keep the café alive, and with a lack of business expertise (Harry has a background in Computer Science), or huge amounts of capital to begin with, the pair needed some help to get their idea off the ground and that’s when they launched a Crowdfunder campaign with a target of £10,000.
It was a nail biting finish but they made their target. Without hitting their goal, they would not have received any of the money, as is the rules of a Crowdfunder campaign. For them, £10,000 was a game changer – literally – for two reasons; it validated their belief that there was a demand locally for what they wanted to achieve and now the fact there was a pot of money to actually make that dream a reality.
Said Aaron: “With that money we knew that we could actually fill the shelves with games and get the things that were actually going to make the place fun from the beginning. If the Crowdfunder hadn't have gone through, it would have been very bare bones. I don't know if it would have worked because people coming in and seeing a games café with barely any games, and barely any café, would have been a totally different experience.”
Raising money is all well and good but Aaron and Harry had to make the business sustainable – they had to make money. They manage to do that in various guises.
“The original idea (a table time charge of £2 per hour) is very much alive and reflected in our income,” Aaron explained.
“The second is coffee and tray bake sales. So, the café really does boost us a lot. You're basically paying for an amount of time of entertainment. If you go anywhere it'll be a lot more than £2 per hour. You can get three hours of entertainment for £6 and add, say a coffee or a couple of rounds of coffee; that's actually one of the bits we were quite surprised at, was actually the rounds of coffee people bought throughout their sessions. The longer someone's playing the game, the more likely they are to get their next drink.”
While the economics seem straightforward, Aaron and Harry go hard on the community aspect; they know the community and they work hard on developing it because making that a success will, in turn, make their business a success.
“We have plenty of what you would consider regulars but we look at it more like members of a community. Many of these people would come in and participate in multiple different types of events; they'll even suggest events and lead events themselves. They’re just such a friendly group of people.”
Aaron and Harry also offer up a membership programme that gives patrons discounts on gaming sessions.
“The way it works is that people can pay an annual membership which means, that for every gaming session they come in for they get the session for a percentage off – depending on what membership is – for everybody at their table.”
Aaron says they will be looking at developing their membership offering down the line.
Events is another way the pair generate revenue but sometimes they operate events at a loss…in revenue at least, for their value in loyalty often outweighs the tangible monetary value.
“Some events we've run actually at a loss just for the sake of having something fun to do for the community,” Aaron admitted.
“For example, we have a a Warhammer tournament that runs once every other month and it's an all day tournament. It basically takes up almost every table in the café, which means on those days, there's not as much room for regular members of the public coming in. So, setting that aside and including the buy in cost and whatever refreshments people get through the day, it's generally a little bit less than what we would normally make on that day but, because it's the event, and we love running those, and we love seeing people coming in, it's definitely worth it.”
It has been an incredible first year for Aaron and Harry. In the early weeks and months the pair were putting in 65-hour work weeks but as time has gone on, they’ve managed to strike a balance with their down time, even if they can’t be off at the same time. It helps that it doesn’t feel like work for either of them.
They get Tuesday and Wednesdays off but the daily routine has been mastered; most of the less exciting parts of the day happen early on – deliveries, inventory etc – before it all comes to life in the evening.
“You almost always end the day on a high because everybody there and it really is a great atmosphere, it’s fun and you're talking to everyone, it’s just great to be around.”
Often, the idea of starting a business sounds great in your head but a daunting prospect in reality and it certainly doesn’t help when you have the naysayers – Aaron and Harry had plenty of those but thankfully they spoke to the right people who saw the potential.
Aaron continued: “At the start loads of people told me that they don't see it working but then as soon as I switched to speaking to people who knew the industry, they were a lot more positive about it, telling me that it works in a lot of places, so why not here?
“It's perhaps always a little too scary to maybe take that first step of looking into it and pushing the boat out but when we did take those first steps and speak to the business adviser, as well as look into other businesses like this, it became a lot easier to picture how it would all actually work.”
Research was key. Aaron saw how it worked in England, when he was there studying. He built a model of how he wanted the business to operate and then he spoke to a business adviser who shaped the dream into more of a reality.
“At that point we started to see what we would have to do to bring it to fruition. “It's slow, methodical, do your research, and then go for it.”
Being ahead of the curve and opening something that hasn’t been done before in Northern Ireland really helped too. This side of the Irish Sea, there weren’t too many all encompassing hobby cafés and with Banbridge, they had the perfect catchment area.
“I think this idea is finally starting to come over here a little bit more, but we are lucky to be one of the first ones to put it into brick and mortar,” said Aaron.
It’s embracing a culture, a community and Aaron says they have dove headfirst into that geek culture.
And probably the most obvious test of a business’s viability for its owner would be – would you use the business? For Aaron, the answer was unequivocal.
“If this opened in Banbridge when I was in secondary school, I would have been here once or twice a week…at least!”
As for the future, it’s slow and steady progress but there’s hope of expanding into a function room upstairs in the property and continue to grow the retail side of the business.