Room to Play: Local entrepreneurs find success in gaming cafes and esports venues

It’s 4 p.m. on a Wednesday, and Jess Hamlet, fresh from leaving her workday as an athletic trainer for CoxHealth, steps into Village Meeple Board Game Cafe and into another role: business owner.

“In the morning, I say I’m going to work, and then later, I head here to the cafe, but this feels more like home,” Hamlet said. “I’m here longer. I get paid less, but this is my dream. This is my baby.”

Village Meeple LLC celebrated its first anniversary in June, and Hamlet said it’s been a success since day 1. “Owning a board game shop, we’re not going to retire millionaires, but it’s going really well, and we’ve even seen growth,” she said.

In Springfield, businesses centered around community gaming have seen a surge. From classic board games to esports venues, multiple companies have opened in the last year, including Village Meeple Board Game Cafe, 5c Gaming, Dirk’s Tavern and Cricketts Esports.

The tabletop game market, according to Fortune Business Insights, was valued at over $13 billion in 2023, with a forecast to reach $32 billion by 2032. Part of the growth, the report finds, is due to an increase in board game cafes, a hybrid of a tabletop game library and cafe, opening across the United States.

Hamlet started the cafe as a family business, running it with the support of her wife, Sarah. In the first year of operations, however, she was able to hire three part-time staff, including one of the cafe’s repeat customers.

“We all just fell into step so quickly here, like having a second family,” Hamlet said. She added that with the gaming community, it’s not hard to do, especially after COVID. “A lot of us forgot how to be humans, but with games, even video games and role-playing games, it gives people that third party to start interacting and being social comfortably.”

According to a database compiled by Meeple Mountain, a media outlet covering the board game industry, there are over 800 board game cafes globally, but fewer than 10 in Missouri. Hamlet said she knew the time was right for Springfield after seeing the success of the Branson Boardgame Cafe, which opened in 2019.

“We saw that it was sustainable in the Branson market and decided to go for it here,” Hamlet said. She added she’s considering expanding the venture and is looking at communities about an hour outside of Springfield.

Anthony Chatfield, editor-in-chief of Board Game Academics Journal, said the game room business model has been effective because it doesn’t rely solely on retail to stay open. “By monetizing the experience – charging library fees and hourly time fees and selling food and beverages – cafes and game rooms offer a third space less reliant on retail success when retail competitiveness with online stores is nearly impossible,” he said via email. “Combined with the growth in the number of people playing tabletop games, the demand is much higher for this type of space with a sustainable model.”

At Village Meeple Board Game Cafe, while Hamlet carries a variety of new and used board games, original art by local artists and a variety of drinks and prepackaged snacks, the cafe requires a $5 admission to play. The admission, she said, is the cafe’s largest profit center.

Another new gaming venture, 5c Gaming, also focuses on community gaming but with a focus on card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh. Originally opening as The Card Shop in 2021, the business focused on sports and gaming trading cards in a 1,300-square-foot shop on the north side of Springfield, according to Peter Strauch, who co-owns the business with Mathew Anksorus.

“Pretty quickly, we saw that Magic: The Gathering was the main attraction and that sports people and gamers are two very different markets, so we shifted our focus and rebranded as 5c Gaming,” Strauch said via email.

Strauch said the business would reach capacity each night with in-store gaming customers, so he relocated to Wilhoit Plaza downtown in March. The new location is a 3,000-square-foot store with a 64-person seating capacity.

“We’re doing way better than I expected since moving downtown,” Strauch said. “My main goal has always been to build a community. I want 5c Gaming to be a place where everyone can come to have a good time playing tabletop games. We plan to stay here for a long time and want to cultivate a strong community.”

5c does not have an admission fee but charges for tournament play and is working toward a private room rental option by late summer. In addition to online sales and carrying cards and games, Strauch said they pay attention to what retail products their customers want: “We stock items like Plushkins and imported snacks because our customers asked for them. Our store’s inventory is driven by what our customers want, as our main focus is on fun and enjoyment.”

In the digital realm, Cricketts Esports, a video gaming center, opened its doors in Sunshine Corners on west Sunshine in June. It features a game room with 10 computers and space for tabletop gaming. Owner Cody Ricketts said the decision to open was driven by the growing recognition of esports as a viable career path, with local high schools and colleges, including Missouri State University, Ozarks Technical Community College and Drury University, forming clubs and teams. With only one other venue, Contender eSports, currently operating in Springfield, Ricketts said he knew the time was right.

Like the other gaming businesses, Cricketts Esports charges an hourly admission to play games and also offers a monthly membership fee.

For each of the business owners, reaching the finish line to opening day was similar to starting a new game: reading the instructions and gathering a team of friends and family. 

“I used resources I was lucky enough to have,” Hamlet said, noting those mainly included her wife and her parents. “I also leaned heavily on a friend who owned a business for years, and she really helped me walk through a lot of the processes.”

Hamlet said she tried to figure out as much as she could on her own, including obtaining proper licensing.

“I would go to each city building and try to make friends with the people at the desk. ‘What do I need? What can I do? What’s my next step?’” she said. “It’s definitely not common sense.”

Both Strauch and Ricketts studied business management in school, and they said this helped with the logistics part of the planning. “I’ve worked in retail for many years at different levels from sales to manager, learning a lot from the owners I worked with,” Strauch said. “I did a lot of research, read up on what it takes to start a business and took care of all the paperwork and licenses. I also figured out how to find distributors to get us going.”

Rickets compares starting his business with the sportsmanship of playing games. “You have to know that you can fail and you have to be OK with that,” he said.

In the end, though, he has one main objective: “My goal is all about building community.”