Snakes & Lattes facts for kids

Snakes & Lattes
A game of Dominion at Snakes & Lattes
Restaurant information
Established	2010
Current owner(s)	Subsidiary of Amfil Technologies, Inc. Publicly traded - ticker symbol: FUNN [1]
Food type	Coffees, teas, draft beers, sandwiches, snacks, desserts
Dress code	Casual
Street address	600 Bloor St. West; 489 College St.; 45 Eglinton Ave. East
City	Toronto
State	Ontario
Postal/ZIP code	M6G 1K4; M6G 1A5
Country	Canada
Seating capacity	150; 240; 250
Reservations	No
Website	www.snakesandlattes.com

Snakes & Lattes is a popular chain of board game cafés. It started in Toronto, Canada, and now has several locations there and in the United States. Many other board game cafés around the world were inspired by Snakes & Lattes.

At these cafés, you pay a small fee to play board and card games. You can play for as long as you like! Each location has a huge collection of games, from 1,000 to 3,000 different titles. When the first café opened, it did not have Wi-Fi. This was to encourage people to focus on playing games and talking with friends. Later, Wi-Fi was added to help students and people working in the mornings. The cafés also serve tasty food and drinks, including local draft beers.

How Snakes & Lattes Started

Ben Castanie and Aurelia Peynet opened the first Snakes & Lattes on August 30, 2010. This location is now known as the Annex café. Ben and Aurelia moved to Toronto from France a few years earlier. They got the idea for the café after visiting a game store in Chicago in 2008. They named their café after the classic board game, Snakes and Ladders. For two years, they slowly collected many games to get ready for opening day.

Growing Bigger and Better

The café quickly became very popular. It soon needed more space for all its guests. In 2011, they bought the building next door. They knocked down the wall between the two places. This added about 2,000 square feet and increased seating from 45 to 150 people. By January 2016, Snakes & Lattes was one of the biggest board game cafés in the world. It had 7,500 square feet of space.

In January 2014, a second location opened called Snakes & Lagers. Also in 2014, Snakes & Lattes helped the Toronto International Film Festival. They offered a special "game concierge" service for visitors who wanted to play games.

In July 2015, a TV show called Snakes & Lattes: The Show was announced. It was a fictional story about the café's early days.

Snakes & Lagers closed in September 2015. But it quickly reopened in a larger spot across the street. This new place was called Snakes & Lattes College. It could hold 240 guests and had over 1,000 games. It combined the best of both worlds, offering coffee, tea, beer, and wine.

In December 2017, Snakes & Lattes opened a large new location in Midtown Toronto. This café is 10,000 square feet and has three floors.

Expanding to the United States

Snakes & Lattes began opening locations in the United States in 2018. Construction started on their first U.S. café in Tempe, Arizona, in May 2018. "Snakes & Lattes Tempe" opened in October 2018. It is located in the busy Mill Avenue District.

Snakes & Lattes is part of a larger company called Amfil Technologies, Inc. This company is publicly traded, which means anyone can buy shares in it.

Games You Can Play

The first Snakes & Lattes Annex location started with about 1,200 games in 2010. By 2015, a special game curator helped the collection grow to about 3,000 games. All these games are available for guests to play for a small fee. The cafés also sell many different games in their stores and online.

They have friendly "game gurus" who are experts at games. These gurus can help new players learn how to play games they don't know. Snakes & Lattes also hosts a monthly Game Designers Night. Here, game designers let the public try out new game ideas. They also have regular game tutorials and tournaments.

Snakes & Lattes Publishing

In July 2017, Snakes & Lattes announced they would start publishing their own board games. One month later, they signed their first publishing deal. This deal gave them the right to sell certain games. They also hired a graphic designer named Daniel Bieber to help with this.

In May 2018, the company that owns Snakes & Lattes bought a French board game publisher called Morning. This company continued to operate from France. This purchase gave Snakes & Lattes ownership of five games. These included IKAN, Red Panda, and Kill the Unicorns.

How Snakes & Lattes Inspired Others

Snakes & Lattes is famous for inspiring many other board game cafés. Places like Victory Point Café in Berkeley and Draughts in London were influenced by it. Other inspired cafés include Thirsty Meeples in Oxford and The Uncommons in New York City.

Snakes & Lattes even created a 24-part YouTube series. This series showed in detail how their business worked. Many new board game cafés copied their successful business model.

Snakes & Lattes also helped board game cafés become popular in Toronto. By 2016, there were more than 20 such businesses in the city.