Introduction to your café:
I’m Rachel and I have been running Outside The Box Board Games Café with my partner Helen since July 2024.
Prior to that, I was an ever-so-corporate Finance Director working for an international bakery company and Helen was a Parenting Practitioner working for her local city council.
Turning 50 years old is the perfect excuse for a change in career, so we ditched our jobs and threw ourselves into opening a community board games café in the wonderful village of Bramhall, Stockport.
The North West of England has quite a few great board games cafes in the area, so we wanted to do things a bit differently:
· We are tiny – we have 20 seats and we’re located in a village. We’re not going for mass market appeal. We’re aiming to build a great community.
· We are not-for-profit – we do it because we passionately love board games and we love how they bring people together.
· We focus on solo gamers – we have a packed Events Calendar with a huge range of activities for people to come on their own.
· We spend more time teaching games than cooking – our menu features hearty pies from Macclesfield’s Lord of the Pies and an extensive range of snacks and homemade bakes, but we won’t make you a sandwich!
Your board game collection
We cater for all ages at Outside The Box. Our main shelfie is ordered from bottom to top in complexity – kids games at the bottom and heavyweight games at the top.
With 250+ games, we try to cover all the bases. We have most of the ‘essentials’ plus many more. Our most rare game is Discworld: Ankh-Morpok – recently we hosted an event where we had 4 games played simultaneously!
Like many gamers, I’m constantly reading BoardGameGeek and Tabletop Gaming and chatting about games with friends. So I always make sure there are opportunities to play the hottest new titles at the café.
Events & community
Events are our lifeblood, and we rely on volunteers to help us run games in small groups.
My favourite regular events are We Read The Rules So You Don’t Have To evenings. Here we take a strategic board game, such as Agricola, and have a table host teaching and playing the entire game for the evening.
We run lots of Dungeons & Dragons for kids, teens and adults. We run a mix of One Shots and campaigns. We also run Pathfinder and Conspiracy X RPGs.
Mahjong has been a surprise success. Due to popular demand, we run Mahjong lessons and also host a regular club for more experienced players.
We run a weekly Chatty Café session on Wednesdays 12-3pm. Here we offer free board gaming sessions and have a team of volunteers. Playing games is a great icebreaker and NHS social prescribers and loneliness charities often refer clients to us. We have a great group of regulars who look forward to their Wednesdays!
We also like to branch out from time to time: Helen's artistic background means she's brilliant at running arts and crafts sessions for all ages (particularly during the school holidays and at Christmas), while my love of wine occasionally spills over into wine-tasting evenings.
We have a very active WhatsApp community, and this is a great way for us find out what our customers would like to do at the café, and a great way for them to arrange games sessions.
Food & drinks
We serve a range of handmade pies from Lord of the Pies, and all our cakes and cookies are homemade.
We find that people like to snack during a game, rather than eat a big meal, so we have a huge range of finger food.
We’re fully licensed to sell alcohol. Our beer is sourced from Cheshire’s Weetwood Brewery.
We’re barista trained and sell premium coffee from Limini Roastery in Yorkshire.
Our commitment to authenticity is rounded off by our range of soft drinks from Folkington’s.
Why people should visit
You should visit Outside The Box if you want a personal experience where Helen or I will greet you, chat with you, teach you a game and possibly make a mistake with your order!
Our venue is light and airy and very inclusive. We want everyone who walks through the door to feel like they belong here.
Useful visitor information
We’re open every day except Monday and Tuesday, normally until 7pm. But we do lots of after-hours events and we’re open until 10pm on Fridays and Saturdays. Please visit https://www.outsidetheboxltd.co.uk/ for our full opening hours, to book a table or to see our Events Calendar.
We’re on Facebook and Instagram – our handle is Outsidetheboxltd.
