The rules are simple: grab a coffee and a tasty snack, pick one of hundreds of board games on offer, sit down and play.
That’s the ethos of Langford’s new board game cafe, The Outpost, which encourages people to put down their electronic devices, and instead create memories and connections the old-fashioned way.
The brains behind the cafe with a twist are Langford brothers Joshua and Elijah Driver, who say the idea came about when they realized the city was lacking options for evening entertainment.
Throw in a passion for coffee, a love for their hometown Langford and a collection of board games, and you have the “perfect storm” of an idea for a business, Elijah tells the Goldstream Gazette.
“Everybody says they're just stoked there's something to do in Langford at night,” adds Joshua. “People have told us they were waiting for something like us to open – the response has been awesome.”
Two of eight children, the Driver brothers say board games were a huge part of their childhood. So much so, a third of the roughly 900 board games on offer in their library have come from their personal collection.
The brothers say it is the largest selection of board games in the West Shore.
Games range in age from vintage to new; and in style, from European through to Americana.
“We’ve got lots of two-player games, young kids games, one-player games,” said Joshua. “So there's kind of a bit of everything.”
“It’s really cool too when you see someone coming in who is a senior, or around that age, and you hear them go, “Oh, my gosh, they have this game. I haven't played that so long.’ That’s really awesome,” adds Elijah.
As children they remember playing classics such as Payday, “a lot of” Monopoly and Scrabble, before moving on to more complex strategy games like Catan, in their teenage and adult years.
Their favourite games now? Joshua remains faithful to the Catan series of games, while Elijah opts for the inspiration behind the cafe’s name, a game of deception called The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31.
“Someone's an alien and you're trying to figure out who the alien is,” explains Elijah. “You look your friends straight in the eyes and be like, ‘You lied to me and I couldn't tell,’ it’s so fun.”
At The Outpost, customers pay a small cover charge for unlimited access to the hundreds of games on offer.
There’s also coffee, pizza and an in-house baker serving up imaginative treats like the Bop-tart, a reimagining of the classic Pop-Tart, which promises a sweet nostalgia trip with a twist.
“You just get to a game, hang out and eat snacks and connect with people,” says Elijah. “It’s as simple as that.”
For more information about The Outpost, visit their website: www.theoutpostboardgamecafe.com.
