How Dogpatch Games Wrote the Rulebook for Tabletop Gaming Customer Service

EMILY: I’m Emily Washcovick, Yelp’s Small Business Expert. Every episode I pick one review on Yelp and talk to the entrepreneur… and the reviewer… about the story and business lessons behind their interactions. Let’s see what’s behind this week’s review.

JENNY: I’m a CEO of a gaming company myself, so we develop video games and not as much into board games, but I have always played them with friends. So really I found Dogpatch Games when I ended up moving to the Dogpatch area. Always lived in South Bay and then moved up here pretty recently and kinda walked around.

There’s a lot of new businesses opening up. So one of the first businesses I remember soft opening was Dogpatch Games and I was right across the street. So I went in not really expecting much, cause I was not a big board game fan. I am a video game die hard fan. So what are these board games?

And I went with a group of three friends. We went in, didn’t know what this was about. I thought it was just a board game store cuz they just had a lot of board games up. But talking to the owner, he was like, oh, actually I’ll teach you how to play some games if you want.

But he showed us how to play, but then we ended up playing for an hour. So it’s like, this is actually kind of fun. Maybe I should give board games more of a chance. So, really after that, I ended up telling more people about it.

EMILY: That’s Jenny X., a Yelp Elite reviewer, telling me about her first experience at Dogpatch Games. Dogpatch Games is not only a board game store but also a community space where people can come and learn new games. Let’s hear her review.

JENNY: I love this place. First of all, the owner is incredible, and I met him right when the place started. Their service is really great. We were playing Everdell and he literally walked my group through how to play the entire game.

Spent so much time with us, like we got a lot of the rules wrong and he would correct us. So just so much patience and the vibes are really great for just hanging out and spending time with my friends. We were new grads from college, so kinda used to hanging out in dorms and this almost had that dorm like feeling or being in a lounge.

So it hit it home for us and the place literally had every game that we wanted to play and the prices were really cheap, especially for sitting down and just playing some games you don’t even have to buy a game to just play some. So definitely very in love with this place. And will come again.

EMILY: At first, Jenny was skeptical of Dogpatch. After speaking with owner Shannon Newton, and learning how to play games, she became a regular customer. Let’s hear from Shannon how Dogpatch came to be.

SHANNON: I was a signal officer in the Army. and I’ve been working in the tech industry because, you know, Bay Area, tech industry, it seems very logical. And I started my own data collection company here in the same building. And we were doing data collection for a variety of companies doing AI development.

I liked, but never loved what I was doing. But I’ve always been passionate about board games. And like my background is Sunday nights. My parents owned a restaurant—they were restaurateurs and they were gone all the time. So I didn’t see them all week. I would get up for school and they were still sleeping the night before. And then when I come home from school, they were gone. But Sunday nights, family dinner, board games. So for me, that was my connection to my family.

COVID hits, and I’m still running this data collection agency for these customers. It pays me well, but I don’t love it. We have to kind of shut down because everybody else has to shut down.   There was a consignment store next door, and their business didn’t survive Covid. And so the owner was like, hey, do you need this extra space?

This space was open and I made this ridiculously low offer to the owner, and he took it. And I was like, okay, well I have this space. I want to do this. I love board games. Let me just start over there and open a little storefront. And I wanted to have board games out of boxes. I had this idea that people would be there, they would come into the store and the box would be open and on display or on the wall, and I would be like, Hey, sit down, like, why don’t you sit down and I’ll play around with you, and to just introduce them. I wanted them to love it like I loved it. And I wanted them to find a space where they could be with people who were also feeling lonely and wanted to be together.

EMILY: Dogpatch Games was a true pandemic baby. And because Shannon had some business acumen, he knew the best approach was to start slow, and give the business a chance to grow into the neighborhood. At first he just filled a tiny section of the additional space he took over. And he was still running his data collection business, so he couldn’t be open long hours, every day of the week. They started with a soft opening where they were only open a few hours a day and people like Jenny found out about it through word of mouth, or neighborhood recognition as people walked by.

SHANNON: We did it very organically, very word of mouth, and that was one thing I would say we had the luxury of doing because it was 20% of our space over there that I wasn’t paying a lot for, so I could build it organically and try some different things.

The most important thing is like engaging people. If you are invited to sit down, and it looks fun, it’s on the table and you’re like, ‘Hey, do you want to try something?’ And you don’t feel like you’re being scammed or whatever you’re gonna, sit down and try this. So the key: making it inviting. Setting things up or putting them out and then when people’s natural curiosity causes them to stop and pause, you’re like, ‘do you wanna try that? Let me just show you.’ It’s fun and it’s an easy yes. And you just show ’em around. They’re like, that’s great.You wanna play a game here? And if there’s two of ’em, you’re like, why don’t you guys sit down, I’ll talk you through it. And you don’t ask anything of them. Our approach in the beginning was, we just want you to discover the joy of being in this space and finding something new and the novelty of a game and the competition. But it’s pretty, and it’s interesting and it’s fun and it’s something they haven’t done before.

That’s enough. Let’s not lead with, hey, it’s $7 an hour. We’re gonna lead with, do you want to try this thing? And if they say yes, we’re like, I’m gonna focus on that. And then, you know, if you wanna stay longer, we can talk about that.

EMILY: When customers walk in, it’s not always love at first sight. This is where our focus on customer service comes in. At Dogpatch, Shannon’s passion for board games is what got Jenny to stay and play more games and see Dogpatch as that community gathering space Shannon and the other owners set out to create.

JENNY: I definitely entered being really skeptical. I was like, yeah, we’re just gonna pop in and leave. This is not gonna be somewhere we’re gonna spend a lot of time in. This person is just asking a lot of questions. We kind of wanna get outta here.

But just seeing how much passion the owner had for games and was like, super excited about it. I was like, oh, like I’ll even, you know, let my guard down a little and be not skeptical for a second here and let him try to convince us. So I think it was just that passion really for what they’re doing. And it was very clear that they themselves were like consumers of the board games.

EMILY: Shannon and the team at Dogpatch want people to explore and tap into that playfulness we all have deep down. And they want people to think of their space as much more than a retail store. They’re a gathering center, and an arena for people to play. This concept allowed them to set up a membership model. Membership models can help your business, even in an industry you wouldn’t traditionally think of as having memberships. Shannon says you don’t just approach someone who walks through the door for the first time and ask them if they want a monthly subscription. First you need to ease them into the business. Shannon heard this process described in a business book as the front porch, living room and kitchen concept. You let customers see what you’re about slowly, and give them the interest in going further into the business.

SHANNON: Front porch, living room, kitchen. And this concept of front porch being very approachable. It’s your, somebody’s driving by and you got lemonade and a rocking chair. You know, you want ’em to come in and sit down and drink some lemonade and have some fun.

You’re just trying to get them to see the inside the house. Cuz what you want is from this sit down, drink the glass on the lemonade and look inside and wow, it’s a nice living room, I wanna see the living room. Then there’s a kitchen and they’re having a great meal. They’re sitting out with family and you – I wanna be in the kitchen.

So every step of the way, we wanna make it very approachable for our community members to say yes. But then we also have, we always have something a little deeper in the house that’s a little more interesting and a little more engaged.

So, our model is always, our front porch is always casual. People who are like, I just found out about Dogpatch Games. That sounds fun. I wanna learn a game. I wanna show up and learn this train game or whatever. And they show up. They learn a game, they meet some people and they go home, totally fine. That front porch did its job. It let ’em know we are here. And we usually make that price point really low. It’s kind of the end cap in the supermarket, right?

But then we have a lot of, for our members, we have a lot of living room and kitchen events that are a little deeper, longer campaigns. Dungeons and Dragons or we’re gonna teach them a specific game with like really cool miniatures or just different things that expose them to different ways to have fun and be together that they may not already be doing.

EMILY: I was curious how Dogpatch came up with their price points, and particularly how they decided on a membership price. Shannon said it involved a lot of research, and it was a continuation of his front porch, living room, kitchen metaphor when deciding on how to price different membership levels. At the end of the day, his priority was on accessibility for all customers.

SHANNON: Before we ever opened the doors, we came up with six potential customers. How often they’ll come in, how much will they spend based on our own research, in the store versus playtime and how frequently they would come in and what, at what point does it make sense for that person to say yes to membership?

Because we knew that we always wanted a membership model for two reasons. One from a, from a pragmatic business hat reason, a stable income. We have close to 250 members right now, and I know that every month that grows. We’ve got about a 20% membership growth month over month.

As that membership grows, that’s a steady state of income for us, and we know that that’s coming in. And we have some attrition, of course. We’ve built that into the model and that’s great. But more importantly, if somebody is part of that community and they’re continuing to contribute their hard-earned dollars toward that, they feel part of it, and they do feel like more engaged.

They’re more willing to show up, and, that’s that’s the social affirmation decision point for sales where you walk by and the store is full because they’re members and they wanna take advantage of their membership, and it makes you wanna walk into that same store. So it feeds itself. So our mindset was like, we want a membership model because it stables out our income. Even if it means that maybe they would pay more because they would stay longer and we’re losing out lot of money, that’s okay.  But the store is full. New members are gonna come in because they’re walking behind what they’re saying.

But yeah, we came up with $7. We wanted to do five an hour, but we felt like for San Francisco, I don’t think we could pay our staff well enough. So we came up with seven just because we didn’t want double digits and we wanted to find that price on average, we know that the Mary customer, who is our most frequent customer, or this is what we’re focusing on, that she’s gonna come in three times a month. What makes sense for her if she’s coming in three times a month and that’s $7. So, that was kind of what we did, how we decided the pricing.

We’re not trying to go as low as we can. We’re trying to find a place of price that feels fair, but recognizing that this is a premium game space. And we want to have our community members feel like they’re getting enough value for their membership where they’re getting the premium service, but they’re getting enough of a discount for it, and they’re getting invited to these extra things that they don’t want to give up their membership. And that’s where kind of came up with the price.

EMILY: As a new business, it takes more than word of mouth to get people to become customers, and members in the case of Dogpatch. For Shannon, hosting events at Dogpatch Games was a way to transform it from a simple board game store to a community.

SHANNON: One of our key tenets or touchstones that we try to focus in on is inclusivity. And we’re not just talking diversity. It’s this idea that there is a seat for everybody, and there’s a game for everybody. This game may not be for you, but this game is, and you just haven’t found it yet. So this idea of inclusivity. Respect for the community. It’s a place where you’re wanted and you’re welcome and it’s fun.

There’s fun things going on here. So we try to have things that touch all bases. We have a ladies’ night that’s one of our staff members just runs games. And it’s not like we’re saying, boys you’re not allowed. It’s just like we’re giving a safe space that feels welcome.

They’re people that can have just as much fun as anybody else, but potentially not necessarily represented in the community because they just don’t know about it or they don’t feel welcome, or they don’t see people like themselves. And we wanna break all those down. We want everybody in our community to feel like that’s my space too.

Something we’ve got coming up with parents and kids, we have like a kids club with Dungeon Dragons and D&D and the parents drop their kids off, but we also have Parents Night Out where the parents, we have a partnership, so we’re trying to create a little neighborhood community with our other establishments in our neighborhood, cuz we’re all in this together. Gilberts is one of our close partners. Latin Fusion on third Street. And what we do is, we sell like a parents’ night out. They drop their kids off. Gilbert’s gives ’em a coupon for appetizer and drink. They go over there and walk over to Gilbert’s, across the street. The kids are here for two hours playing games. We got ’em. You go have your date night and then come back and pick ’em up. So these kind of things like building a community, like trying to figure out where the tenders are. Where are people that are representing the community and how can we create a space for them too that they’re enjoying and they feel engaged.

EMILY: Shannon himself understands the value of community. After spending years in the Army, he resonated with the feeling of belonging and wanted to bring it to members of the Dogpatch community.

SHANNON: I think the sense of belonging to something. When I joined the Army at like 17, this is back in 1990, this was a long time ago, it was because first of all, I needed to get out of this little small town I grew up in. But also I didn’t feel like I really belonged anywhere. I was a little bit lost. And what I gained from my Army brethren was this sense of belonging and being part of something.

It felt like a family to me and I think that that was definitely the seeds of my appreciation for community and having a thing that binds you together. In our case, we were all enlisted, so that is a thing. But for our community, this idea that there’s this centerpiece around our shared love of tabletop gaming. That’s just the impetus that binds us together.

EMILY: Jenny resonates with the feeling of family one gets at Dogpatch Games. And her friends feel it too. Since she lives in the same neighborhood as the store, she was able to see them blossom first hand, with more and more people bringing seats to the board game tables. She thinks this is mostly due to Shannon and the other owner’s passion. And that passion has led to partnerships and opportunities, including one with Jenny’s friend.

JENNY: The owner every time would come in and be like, ‘Hey, let me teach you how to play.’ Which is really cool cuz he would just spend like 10, 20 minutes with each of us and be like, ‘here’s how you play.’ And would even help moderate the game, which I think felt like very premium customer service.

And it just felt like he cared. So that’s probably one of my favorite parts of local businesses. And over time I just found games I really liked. Started to bring friends who really loved games too, and they started buying games. Like there’s one called Everdell that we played one time that took us almost I think two hours to play, but we were just there from 6:00 to 8:00 PM and we didn’t even realize how long we were there. We were like, oh, I just killed time before dinner. And then dinner was right there for some reason. So that was really cool.

I think over time one of my friends, for her company, she was like, ‘oh, I wanna do a partnership with Dogpatch Games cause I like it so much.’ So now they have a corporate relationship. I think it was the first one Dogpatch Games had ever done. So it’s kind of cool to see. And two months ago I went to Fan Expo in SF and saw that Dogpatch Games had a booth there and they’re teaching people how to play. And I went up to the owner saying ‘oh wow! I remember when you all just soft open, like it’s crazy how big you are now and having a presence in the community.’

EMILY: Shannon didn’t always expect Dogpatch Games to be so successful. And as an entrepreneur, starting a new business can feel intimidating. However, Shannon encourages other business owners to keep their heads up and know that the journey always gets better.

SHANNON: We didn’t know it was gonna work. I’m terrified and proud to say that we don’t have a dime of financing. I am self-funded a hundred percent. So what Jenny saw was a real time evolution of I know what I want, but I don’t know if it’s gonna work. Let me try this. Okay. That worked. Do more of that, okay? No, that didn’t work very well. Okay. Let’s shift over to the left and us making adjustments in real time.

And as the store was growing, she was seeing like, it was open one day for like three hours and then it was five hours and then it was three days a week. That was me like carving out time and also starting to disengage from the Robot Monster side of things, like making an intentional decision to wind this down and put more of my time over there, so that I could grow that. Because I knew that was where my heart was and that’s where I want, that’s where I felt like my future was. And so I didn’t wanna put any more time and energy over here while I’m still taking care of my employees for Robot Monster at the same time.

And then Jenny’s seeing that in real time. Now there’s open five days a week. You know, we’re staying up at 10 o’clock at night. All of that happened very organically. There was a pragmatic approach to it, like, how much time can I spend in the store?

And then bringing on staff. And as we’re bringing on staff, the hours can go up. So all of that happened. She saw it actually happening and everybody else comes by and they don’t realize that we started out as one room over there.

EMILY: Even as Dogpatch Games has grown, Shannon still sits at the table with his customers and shows them how to play games, the same way he did with Jenny when Dogpatch soft opened. Customer service and community is something Shannon will always value, even as the store grows. And he motivates other business owners to use this same philosophy.

SHANNON:  The Dogpatch way is, invite them to play – cuz it’s play, it’s fun, right? Invite them to play. Take off the stigma of if there’s a hurdle of it’s intimidating. I’m not sure what to do. I don’t wanna look stupid. You’re not gonna look stupid, you’re gonna look perfect. Sit down, let’s play. And you’re almost, we’re almost a little insistent about it. Come on, sit down, you’re gonna, you’re gonna have fun. And they’re like, okay. You’re like, oh, let’s do this. And you just, you – And we don’t teach ’em an entire game. We just kind of get the first round going and give ’em a try.

And we have a philosophy in how we teach and like we’re trying to get their hands on the pieces as quickly as possible. They don’t wanna monologue, they wanna like, I’m gonna give you the introduction. This is how to play. This is the board, these are the pieces. This is your battlefield. This is your object. This is how a turn looks like. Okay, let’s start playing and try to get them in it as as quick as they can. But the Dogpatch way is one that’s engaged in the beginning. Invite them to play and once they’re playing, take away the hurdles that would normally happen when they’re learning something new or feeling stupid and not knowing what to do. And once that’s covered, start stepping away and let them have their moment.

EMILY: Solid customer service is not only important for getting customers to come back but also to get them to share their experience online. Without Shannon’s attentive customer service, Jenny might not have left such a glowing review. Regardless, Jenny emphasizes the importance of leaving reviews for small businesses and supporting them, especially when they provide a memorable experience.

JENNY: For me, supporting local businesses, just going there and giving them service and taking as many pictures as I can and leaving Yelp reviews, especially if I really like it. I really like it when a business isn’t even on the map, for example. Like being the first to leave a review or being the first to actually add the business into the system. That’s really fulfilling to me cuz it’s like I did this for a separate business. So just seeing now, other people leaving reviews, it feels like it has started to grow. And I was the first.

I think Dogpatch games, I was maybe one of the earliest reviews ever. So it just felt cool, kind of seeing how I had this five star experience and I wanted others to know. Five stars for me is like, this is truly incredible. So, seeing that it’s still five stars, like I was like, I’m validated.

I think local businesses are great cuz the owners are just so much more invested in meeting the customers and making sure that they’re happy. And, it’s just you don’t get that feeling that  they’re there cuz they think it’s a job or like they are here cuz their parents ran the restaurant. Like they’re usually the owners and are taking a risk. So as a like fellow entrepreneur, I’m like, I wanna give them a chance.

EMILY: In all transparency, not all reviews will be this kind. You cannot expect to go through business growth without facing some constructive criticism. Regardless of if reviews are encouraging or critical, Shannon takes them as a learning experience for Dogpatch.

SHANNON: I look at the positive reviews as just affirmations that we’re doing something right. As far as the negative reviews, I try to read through and take a kernel of wisdom from it. Like,  there was one review I think a while back where somebody had an experience where they said that the tavern was very echoey and it was hard to hear what people are saying we’re like, okay,  that’s good feedback. Let’s go back there and let’s take stock. And then it was, we need more soft goods, we need more carpeting. Like it, it was a little echoey. It didn’t really bother us, but it bothered somebody and it was at least some feedback.

I look at the positive reviews and affirmation of that we are still growing and people are looking at us and they’re enjoying it. And I looked at the negative views as an opportunity to, are there some changes we should make and not overreact to any one review. This is one review. But at least listen to it and like, okay. Let’s go back there and see if we can see what they saw. And if we can’t, mehh, you know, everybody’s got their own opinion. But to not take it too personally, that individual wrote that review for a reason, and then it may go beyond, you know, you or your efforts as a person.

We have put a lot of love and ourselves into this place. And that’s the, I think the one thing that I have to just remind myself, it’s good for my ego to kind of keep it in check is that, you know, it’s, there’s negative views. Like, how could you talk about my baby like that? Like, well, I mean, it’s, as soon as you make it public and you invite people in, it’s not really yours anymore. It’s ours. And they are talking about if they feel empowered enough to talk about our shop, then I should listen to that.