How do you start a board game cafe business in 2027?

What a board game cafe actually sells, and why the framing decides everything

The single most consequential decision in this business happens before you sign a lease, before you buy a game, before you even name the place. It is a framing decision: do you believe you are opening a game library that serves food, or a restaurant that lends games? Every downstream choice — square footage, kitchen size, staffing model, menu depth, capital allocation — flows from that one answer, and getting it backwards is the most reliable way to close within eighteen months.

The correct framing is the second one. A board game cafe sells time at a table and the food and drink that fills that time. The library is the marketing engine; the kitchen is the profit engine. Non-alcoholic beverages run roughly 75 to 85 percent gross margin, a focused kitchen menu runs 65 to 70 percent, and food and beverage together typically generate 60 to 70 percent of total revenue in a healthy operation. The cover charge — commonly $5 to $10 per person for unlimited play in most US markets — is a filter, not a revenue line. It screens out people who want to occupy a four-top for four hours with a single tap water, and it signals that dwell time has a price. It does not pay your rent.

What the customer is actually buying is four things a living room cannot provide. First, a curated library nobody at the table had to purchase — a $2,000 collection accessed for $7. Second, a staff member who teaches the rules, so the host does not spend forty minutes reading a rulebook aloud while three friends check their phones. Third, zero setup and zero cleanup. Fourth, a genuine third place that is neither home nor work. If you can articulate all four in your specific market — with a specific reason your room beats a specific living room within a specific drive time — you have a concept. If you cannot, you have a hobby with a cash register attached, and the cash register will lose.

The tailwind behind the model is real, though it is not a guarantee. The global board games market was estimated in the low tens of billions of dollars in the mid-2020s and is widely projected to grow at a high-single-digit compound annual rate into the early 2030s, with hobby and designer titles growing faster than mass-market ones. Trade coverage from outlets like *ICv2* and *Polygon* has tracked more than a decade of crowdfunding-fueled catalog expansion, and Kickstarter's own published category data shows tabletop games consistently among its largest funding categories by dollars pledged. *Catan*, *Ticket to Ride*, *Wingspan*, and *Azul* are household names now, not niche curios. That is a genuinely larger addressable audience than the same business faced in 2010.

But a growing hobby and a viable venue are different propositions. Roughly 20 percent of new US employer businesses fail within their first year and about half within five, per Bureau of Labor Statistics Business Employment Dynamics survival data, and food service sits at the riskier end of that distribution. Demand for the hobby and demand for a paid third place to play it are not the same variable, and only one of them is written into your lease. The hobby's growth gives you a bigger pond. It does not stock your pond with paying fish.

It is worth studying the operators who already proved or stress-tested this model before you write a single line of your own plan. Snakes & Lattes in Toronto is the most-cited North American reference — it popularized the per-person cover-charge structure, scaled to multiple locations, published a cookbook, and licensed its brand into the United States. Its longevity is the strongest available evidence that cover-charge-plus-kitchen is durable rather than faddish. The Uncommons in New York City runs a compact, library-forward room in a punishing rent market and is a useful study in small-footprint economics. Guardian Games in Portland blends a large retail game store with a bar and event space, demonstrating the retail-plus-hospitality hybrid where game sales are a meaningful line rather than a token one. Mox Boarding House in the Seattle area, operated by Card Kingdom, is the premium end — table service, a serious kitchen, a deep library. Regional venues with a full bar program show the alcohol-anchored variant where drinks do most of the margin lifting. And lean owner-operator independents across mid-size US cities show the version most readers of this guide will actually build.

For a market-level view of how analysts value dwell-time, F&B-anchored venues, the public filings of experiential hospitality companies like Dave & Buster's (NASDAQ: PLAY) in the US and Loungers plc (LSE: LGRS) in the UK are the cleanest free window available. Neither is a board game cafe, but the underlying question — how do you monetize a guest who stays for three hours — is identical. On the supply side, Asmodee (owned by Embracer Group) is the dominant force behind much of the catalog you will stock, and Hasbro, owner of Wizards of the Coast, drives much of the organized-play traffic you may want to host. None of these are franchises you must join. All of them are free case studies.

There is a broader lesson here that generalizes past this specific business. Any venture that combines a passion category with a hospitality operation faces the same trap: the passion is what got the founder interested, and the operation is what pays. The record store with a coffee bar, the climbing gym with a cafe, the bookstore with a wine license — all of them fail the same way, by over-investing in the part the founder loves and under-investing in the part that produces margin. The discipline required is emotional as much as financial. You have to be willing to spend $18,000 on an espresso setup and a proper line before you spend $18,000 on the next two hundred titles, in a business you entered because you love the titles.

The step-by-step process from idea to open doors

The sequence matters as much as the steps, because several items are long-lead and will silently become your critical path if you start them late. Here is the whole path in order.

Validate before you spend. Answer three questions with real data. Is there a population of modern board game players within a 15-minute drive who currently have nowhere to go? Look at local game store event attendance, Meetup group sizes, BoardGameGeek user density, and whether existing coffee shops already host informal game nights (a good sign — the demand exists and is currently unmonetized). Can your market support an F&B-anchored venue, meaning is there enough disposable income and evening foot traffic? And — the question founders skip — can you personally tolerate running a restaurant, because that is what this is, seven days a week, for years.

Do the fieldwork physically. Spend a weekend visiting every board game cafe within a two-hour drive. Sit for three hours in each. Count the tables, time the turns with your phone, watch what people order and when, and notice exactly when staff intervene at a table. Order the food and judge it honestly against a normal restaurant, not against your hopes. The most common failure mode you will observe is an owner who loves games and treats the food as an afterthought, then loses to the arithmetic that F&B generates most of the revenue.

You do not need an expensive market study. The Census Bureau's Census Business Builder tool maps household income, age distribution, and density around candidate sites for free. Meetup and Facebook Groups let you count active local tabletop communities. BoardGameGeek indicates how many nearby users log plays. Eventbrite shows what game nights and tournaments already run in your area and what they charge. Yelp and Google Maps reviews of any existing game cafe or barcade tell you exactly what customers praise and complain about, in their own words. The SBA's business plan guidance is explicit that competitive analysis and market sizing are not paperwork — they are the cheapest insurance available against a bad lease.

Then turn the vague feeling of "there's a community here" into a defensible number. Work top-down and bottom-up and trust the smaller of the two. If 90,000 people live within a 15-minute drive and roughly 8 to 15 percent play modern board games, that is around 9,000 hobbyists. If 5 to 12 percent of them visit once a month, that is roughly 700 visits. Add 30 to 50 percent uplift for non-hobby traffic — dates, families, students who come for the room rather than the games — and you land near 1,000 monthly covers. If your honest estimate lands below roughly 1,500 to 2,000 monthly covers at maturity, the model is fragile: shrink the footprint, find a denser site, or walk away. The number that matters is not the national size of the hobby; it is the count of people who will physically walk in and order food.

The cheapest possible market test costs a few hundred dollars. Run a pop-up. Rent a few hours at an existing coffee shop, brewery, or community space on their slow night, bring fifty games and two volunteer gurus, and charge a small cover. Count who shows, watch what they spend on the host venue's menu, and collect emails. Three or four pop-ups teach you more about real local demand than any report, and the email list becomes your soft-launch invite list. If you cannot fill a borrowed room for one night, you will not fill a leased one for ten years.

Then, in order: write the plan and the financial model; secure funding; find and negotiate the site; form the entity and start the permit stack — critically, start the liquor license the day you have site control if alcohol is in the plan, because it is routinely the longest item; complete buildout; curate and catalog the library; hire and train gurus; soft launch to friends and family to stress-test the kitchen and POS under real ticket pressure; then grand opening with press and community outreach.

Realistic total timeline from decision to open doors is six to twelve months. Finding and securing second-generation space takes two to four months, permitting three to six (often overlapping), and buildout two to four. The fastest path by a wide margin is a space that already has a hood, plumbing, grease trap, and a certificate of occupancy.

Costs, timelines, and the numbers you must be able to defend

A realistic buildout for an 1,800 to 3,000 square foot board game cafe in a mid-size US market in 2027 runs $180,000 to $450,000. The dominant swing factor is whether you take second-generation restaurant space or build a kitchen from scratch; secondary factors are seat count, hood and fire suppression requirements, and how much you sink into the library and shelving.

The operating model matters more than the buildout, because the buildout is a one-time number and the operating model repeats every month for a decade. A healthy independent food-service P&L targets cost of goods sold around 28 to 35 percent of sales and total labor around 28 to 35 percent. Together, that "prime cost" should land near 58 to 65 percent of revenue; above 70 percent, the business is structurally unprofitable regardless of how busy it looks. Rent should sit at no more than 8 to 10 percent of projected revenue. Above 12 percent of *realistic* revenue — not hoped-for revenue — the deal is probably broken before you open, and no amount of operational excellence fixes a broken lease. That leaves a pre-tax margin in the high single digits in a good year, which is normal for hospitality and means cash discipline is permanent, not a startup phase.

The per-table math is where the business either works or does not, and it is worth internalizing. A four-top paying $7 each generates $28 in cover for a table that occupies prime real estate for three hours. That same table needs to produce $60 to $120 in food and drink over those hours for the seat to earn its rent. A weak table — a pair who split one $20 order over three hours — yields about $34 total, or roughly $5.67 per seat-hour. A strong table — four guests who order twice, spending $130 across two and a half hours — yields $158, close to $16 per seat-hour. That is a threefold difference in the productivity of identical square footage, and the variable is not the cover charge. It is whether the table orders food a second time. Target spend per guest of $18 to $28 including the cover, and 1.0 to 1.5 table turns on a weekend evening.

A conservative first-year trajectory for a 60-seat room in a mid-size market might run roughly 420 weekly covers at $19 spend in the first quarter, 620 at $21 in the second, 780 at $22 in the third, and 900 at $24 in the fourth — landing somewhere near $750,000 to $800,000 of first-year revenue. The precision is not the point; the shape is. A board game cafe does not open into profit. It opens into a hole and climbs out over twelve to twenty-four months. That is exactly why three to six months of reserve capital is not optional.

Break-even is the number every founder should be able to recite from memory. If fixed monthly costs — rent, base labor, insurance, utilities, debt service — total $42,000 and your blended contribution margin after variable COGS is 65 percent, you need roughly $64,600 in monthly revenue just to not lose money. On the trajectory above, the cafe does not clear that bar until the third quarter. Every month before that is funded from reserves. Divide monthly break-even revenue by average spend per guest to get the daily cover count you must hit, then stare at that number until it feels real. Founders who skip this arithmetic discover the hole in month five with no runway left.

On funding: most founders combine personal savings (typically 20 to 40 percent of the stack), an SBA 7(a) bank loan (40 to 60 percent, where lenders expect a 10 to 25 percent owner cash injection and a personal guarantee), equipment financing or leasing (10 to 20 percent, which preserves cash by tying debt to specific assets), and sometimes friends-and-family equity. A board game cafe is also one of the rare hospitality concepts where community crowdfunding genuinely works, because your customers are hobbyists who like supporting things they love. Selling 200 founding memberships at $200 each raises $40,000 and — more valuably — creates 200 people personally invested in your success and a guaranteed opening-night crowd.

More restaurants die of cash-flow *timing* than of bad concepts. Buildout costs are front-loaded, revenue ramps slowly, and payroll and rent arrive every period regardless. Build a thirteen-week rolling cash forecast before you open and update it weekly. Three traps recur: the buildout that runs 20 percent over, the permitting delay that pushes opening back two months while rent accrues, and the slow first quarter that burns reserve faster than modeled. The defense in all three cases is identical — more reserve than you think you need. If the plan works only with zero surprises, the plan does not work.

The permit stack deserves its own timeline. Entity formation runs one to three weeks through your Secretary of State. An EIN from the IRS is same-day and free. A food service establishment permit including health department plan review takes four to twelve weeks. A building permit runs four to ten weeks. Certificate of occupancy comes after final inspection and you cannot legally open without it. A certified food protection manager credential — ServSafe Manager is the most widely accepted — takes one to two weeks and is required in most jurisdictions. And a liquor license, if you serve alcohol, takes three to nine months through your state's alcoholic beverage control agency, costing anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars depending on whether quotas force a secondary-market purchase. File it first.

Where operators get it wrong

Most board game cafes that close do so for one of three predictable reasons. Naming them lets you design against them.

The Collector's Folly is the most common by a wide margin. A hobbyist-first owner builds a 2,000-title library, under-invests in the kitchen, and discovers that a beautiful collection cannot service a restaurant lease. The symptom is easy to spot from outside: a spectacular shelf and mediocre coffee. The fix is a budgeting rule enforced from day one — the espresso setup and the line cook come before the next twenty titles, always, without exception, no matter how good the sale is. Curate 300 to 800 well-chosen titles rather than hoarding 2,000, because a library where half the boxes have missing pieces is worse than a smaller one that is complete. Organize by complexity and play time, label shelves clearly, and log condition.

The Rent Trap is the mistake you cannot fix after opening. An owner signs at 13 to 16 percent of realistic revenue because the space was charming, then spends a decade trying to out-earn a structurally broken deal. Occupancy cost is fixed; revenue is not. Negotiate hard on the terms that matter: a five-year base term with two five-year renewal options to protect the goodwill you build, a tenant improvement allowance in the $20 to $60 per square foot range, two to four months of rent abatement during buildout so you pay nothing before revenue starts, a use clause that explicitly permits food service and amusement events, escalation capped at 2 to 3 percent annually, and a personal guarantee that burns down or is capped. Have a restaurant-experienced commercial broker and a lease attorney review any deal — the cost is trivial against a ten-year obligation.

Throughput Denial is the slow bleed. An owner refuses to confront dwell time, lets four-tops nurse a single $4 drink for four hours, and watches revenue per seat-hour collapse below the level that pays rent. The fix has to be designed in from day one and it has three parts: a real cover charge that prices the seat, a menu engineered for repeat ordering across a long visit, and a service rhythm where staff proactively prompt a second order. This is not upselling in the aggressive sense — it is a well-timed check-back that makes reordering easy.

Beyond the three archetypes, a cluster of smaller errors compounds. Table size is treated as a decorating choice rather than a revenue variable. Modern games sprawl; a 24-inch bistro table that works for two coffees is useless for four players with individual boards and component trays. Plan 30-by-30-inch minimum for pairs and 36-by-48-inch or larger for groups, mix two-tops for dates with four-tops as the workhorse and a few six-to-eight-seat communal tables for tournaments, and place shelving centrally and browsably rather than in a back hallway.

The menu grows and never shrinks. Twelve to twenty items executed consistently beats forty done poorly. A compact menu controls food cost, speeds ticket times, and keeps a small kitchen functional during a Saturday rush. Target kitchen ticket time under twelve minutes — guests came to play, not to wait. Run a recipe cost on every item before it goes on the board, re-run quarterly as supplier prices move, and every quarter cut the bottom two or three sellers from the POS mix. Design food that survives contact with cards and components: flatbreads, pretzels, charcuterie, bowls, and finger food, never anything saucy, greasy, or requiring two hands.

The library is treated as a trophy rather than a tool. Buy for the room, not for yourself — your taste for four-hour war games is irrelevant if the room fills with families and first-timers. Retire ruthlessly: a title nobody has checked out in six months is occupying shelf space a livelier one could use. Run real inventory controls — a unique ID on every box, a laminated piece-count card inside each so a missing meeple is caught at the table rather than three games later, condition tiers reviewed quarterly, and loss controls scaled to value (open shelf for a $20 party game, counter-request for a $90 miniatures-heavy title). Budget 2 to 5 percent of game-related revenue annually for replacement plus 20 to 50 new titles a year to keep regulars curious.

Labor is scheduled flat against a dramatically peaked demand curve. Quiet weekday afternoons and packed Friday and Saturday evenings mean flat staffing wastes money on slow shifts and collapses on busy ones. Use POS sales-by-hour data to staff in tiers, lean on cross-trained part-timers to flex, and track revenue per labor hour weekly. A shift consistently producing under roughly $40 to $60 of revenue per labor hour is either overstaffed or should not be open. Note also that federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour but many states and cities set substantially higher floors and some have eliminated the tipped-wage credit entirely — check the Department of Labor's state-by-state data before finalizing your P&L, because a $17-minimum market with no tip credit changes the labor line dramatically.

And the game guru role is hired for the wrong trait. Hire for warmth and patience first, game knowledge second, because knowledge is teachable and temperament is not. Run a practical interview: hand the candidate a mid-weight game they have never played, give them fifteen minutes with the rulebook, and ask them to teach it to you in five. You are testing whether they can simplify, sequence, and read a confused face. Then train every guru on a core teaching set of fifteen to twenty games spanning party, gateway, and mid-weight tiers, with a one-page teach sheet for each covering the hook, the goal, the turn structure, and the one rule new players always get wrong.

A decision framework: which version of this business to build

There is no single board game cafe model. There are at least four, and the right one depends on your market, your capital, and your tolerance for licensing complexity. Choosing deliberately beats drifting into whichever version your first lease happens to permit.

The lean library cafe — 1,200 to 1,800 square feet, no alcohol, coffee and a tight snack menu, 300 to 400 titles, owner working the floor. Capital requirement is at the low end, roughly $150,000 to $220,000, and the permit path is the shortest because you skip liquor licensing entirely. This is the right build in a market with a strong but small hobbyist community, a college adjacency, or where a liquor license is quota-restricted and prohibitively expensive. The trade-off is a lower ceiling on spend per guest.

The beer-and-wine cafe is the most common successful configuration in the US. A beer-and-wine license is materially easier to obtain than a full liquor license in most jurisdictions, and it lifts check average meaningfully — beer and wine typically run 70 to 78 percent gross margin and can represent 10 to 25 percent of revenue. Choose this when your market has evening adult traffic and your state's licensing regime is reasonable. Budget the three-to-nine-month timeline honestly and file on day one of site control.

The full-restaurant hybrid is the Mox Boarding House end of the spectrum — table service, a real kitchen, a deep library, higher price points. Capital requirement climbs toward and past the $450,000 ceiling, and you now genuinely need restaurant management experience or a partner who has it. Choose this only in a dense market that can support a destination venue and only if you can staff a real kitchen.

The retail-hospitality hybrid — a game store with a cafe attached, the Guardian Games shape — inverts the margin structure. Retail game sales run only 30 to 45 percent gross margin, far below F&B, but they carry inventory that turns and they anchor organized-play traffic (Magic tournaments, D&D nights) that fills weeknights reliably. Choose this if you have retail experience, access to distributor terms through channels like Alliance Game Distributors or publisher-direct programs, and a market underserved by existing game stores.

Whichever version you build, the growth engine is the same: recurring programming plus membership. Weekly trivia fills a slow weeknight. Weekly learn-to-play sessions convert newcomers into regulars. Monthly tournaments draw committed hobbyists and pull retail. Packaged birthday and private parties for 10 to 15 guests often bill $250 to $600 and fill dead weekday afternoons at a premium. And a $15 to $30 monthly membership that waives the cover, gives a small F&B discount, and includes priority event registration does three things at once — it converts occasional visitors into habitual ones, pre-collects cash that smooths brutal slow weeks, and builds a base of regulars whose presence makes the room feel alive on a quiet Tuesday, which in turn draws walk-ins.

That flywheel is the whole business compressed into a sentence. A curious first visit meets a great teach and good food; the guest returns within a month; on the second visit they are offered a membership and join; with the cover waived they visit more often, bring friends, and eventually book a party; their frequent presence makes the room look full on slow nights; and a visibly full, happy room is the best possible advertisement for the next first-timer walking past the window. Every operational investment — guru training, menu engineering, the event calendar — exists to keep that wheel turning. Treat membership count as a core health metric and obsess over month-over-month growth.

Track these weekly and act on the trend rather than the data point: spend per guest ($18–$28), weekend table turns (1.0–1.5), prime cost (58–65 percent), kitchen ticket time (under 12 minutes), the ratio of F&B to cover revenue (F&B should be three to five times the cover — if it is not, you have a hobby rather than a restaurant), membership count, library shrinkage (under 5 percent of game revenue), and event attendance by program.

Finally, an honest counter-case, because a plan that has not survived its strongest objection is not a plan. Dwell time is genuinely the enemy of restaurant economics — a conventional restaurant wants to turn a table every 60 to 90 minutes and you are explicitly selling the right to sit for four hours. The library is a depreciating asset that walks out the door and is worth far less in resale than on the shelf; judge it as marketing spend, the way a restaurant judges its sign and its patio, not as a capital asset. Home gaming and digital tabletop platforms are free, so if you cannot articulate why your room beats a living room, the skeptics are right. Labor is structurally heavy because you are paying people to teach games, not just carry plates. And most seriously: the same $250,000 could open a coffee shop with far faster turns, a barcade with higher per-guest spend, or an escape room selling a fixed-price 60-minute slot instead of an open-ended table. That objection is answered only market by market. A board game cafe wins where a real, underserved player community already exists and F&B competition is weak. It loses where you are betting the hobby will manufacture demand that was never there.

The discipline this business demands is the same one that shows up in any operating model where a beloved asset sits next to a margin engine — the same tension a RevOps team faces when a favorite tool gets defended long after the numbers stopped supporting it. Measure what pays. Love what you like. Never confuse the two.

Related questions

How much does it cost to start a board game cafe?

Plan $180,000 to $450,000 for an 1,800 to 3,000 square foot venue, with $250,000 to $320,000 typical for a mid-range build. Second-generation restaurant space saves $50,000 to $150,000 versus a raw shell. Include three to six months of operating reserve on top.

Do I need a liquor license?

Not necessarily, but beer and wine lifts spend per guest meaningfully and runs 70 to 78 percent gross margin. A beer-and-wine license is easier to obtain than a full bar license. Budget three to nine months through your state ABC agency and file the day you have site control.

How many games should the library hold?

Three hundred to 800 curated titles beats 2,000 with missing pieces. Weight the shelf roughly 25 to 30 percent party games, 30 to 35 percent gateway titles, 20 to 25 percent mid-weight strategy, 10 to 15 percent heavy, and 8 to 12 percent two-player.

How long until it turns a profit?

Twelve to twenty-four months to stable profitability is realistic. Expect losses through the first one or two quarters while covers ramp. If spend per guest is not improving steadily by month 18, revisit pricing, menu engineering, and service rhythm rather than adding more games.

What is the single most common failure?

Building a game library that serves food instead of a restaurant that lends games. The owner over-invests in titles, under-invests in the kitchen, and discovers a beautiful collection cannot service a restaurant lease. The kitchen pays the rent.

FAQ

What's the most common mistake new board game cafe owners make?

Treating the venue as a game library first and a restaurant second. Owners who obsess over the collection while neglecting food and beverage margins tend to close inside a year or two. Food and drink must carry occupancy cost — the cover charge never will. Budget the kitchen before the shelf, every single time, and hold that rule even when a great bulk deal on titles appears.

How much space do I actually need?

Most viable cafes operate in 1,800 to 3,000 square feet. Plan roughly 15 to 18 square feet of dining area per seat, so a 60-seat room needs about 900 to 1,100 square feet of floor before you add kitchen, restrooms, storage, and shelving. That range supports 12 to 20 tables, a small retail shelf, and a compact kitchen. Smaller feels cramped; larger risks dead zones that drag down revenue per square foot.

Should I take second-generation restaurant space or build out a raw shell?

For nearly every first-time operator, second-generation wins. Inheriting a code-compliant hood, grease trap, and ADA restrooms saves $50,000 to $150,000 and roughly three months of permitting. The trade-off is accepting someone else's kitchen layout. Save the raw-shell build for a second location, when you have operating data and the capital depth to justify designing the room exactly your way.

How do I stop games from walking out the door?

Give every box a unique inventory ID logged in a simple database, put a laminated piece-count card inside each so gurus verify components at the table before reshelving, review condition quarterly across four tiers, and scale loss controls to value — open shelf for a $20 party game, counter-request for a $90 miniatures-heavy title, and an ID hold for genuinely rare items. Budget 2 to 5 percent of game revenue annually for replacement regardless.

What should the menu look like?

Twelve to twenty items, executed consistently, designed for a sequence of orders across a long visit rather than one entree. Arrival brings a drink and a light snack in the $4 to $9 band, mid-session a shareable plate at $11 to $18, then a refresh drink and a $5 to $8 dessert. Nothing saucy, greasy, or requiring two hands — the food must survive contact with cards and components. Target blended food cost of 28 to 32 percent and ticket times under twelve minutes.

Is a membership program worth the complexity?

Yes, and it is arguably the highest-leverage program you can run. A $15 to $30 monthly membership that waives the cover charge converts occasional visitors into habitual ones, pre-collects cash that smooths slow weeks, and populates the room on quiet weeknights — which itself draws walk-ins. Track membership count as a core weekly metric. A cafe with 300 engaged members has a revenue floor that a cover-charge-only operation never will.

Sources

• U.S. Small Business Administration — https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/write-your-business-plan
• U.S. Small Business Administration — 7(a) loan program — https://www.sba.gov/funding-programs/loans/7a-loans
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Business Employment Dynamics, establishment survival — https://www.bls.gov/bdm/
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration — FDA Food Code — https://www.fda.gov/food/retail-food-protection/fda-food-code
• National Restaurant Association — https://restaurant.org/
• U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division — state minimum wage — https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/minimum-wage/state
• U.S. Department of Justice — 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design — https://www.ada.gov/law-and-regs/design-standards/2010-stds/
• Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau — https://www.ttb.gov/
• Internal Revenue Service — Employer ID Numbers — https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/get-an-employer-identification-number
• U.S. Census Bureau — Census Business Builder — https://www.census.gov/data/data-tools/cbb.html
• BoardGameGeek — https://boardgamegeek.com/
• ICv2 — hobby games trade coverage — https://icv2.com/

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