Why Play Board Games?
hello!
Pawn and Pint is Kansas City's one and only board game pub!
The campaign to create Pawn and Pint was revealed to the world at KantCon, one of Kansas City's largest conventions, and our Kickstarter was launched (then under the name Pawns and Pints). Through the contributions of over 270 backers, we raised $18,814 to create a board game bar for Kansas City.
We connected with the brilliant Justin Billet from Sullivan, Higdon and Sink, and an awesome professional branding presence was created. Then we went over to the Crossroads district of Kansas City, took over the industrial-esque retail space of the former location of Broadway and Penn and Keys for Kids, and got to work trying to open up Pawn and Pint.
The old space at Southwest Boulevard
As we continued on our quest, we encountered a few hurdles with the city of Kansas City that forced us to wait to get our liquor license, so we opened our doors sans alcohol on October 29, 2016, with about 40 seats and 500 games, owned by Edward Schmalz and Jonathan Steel.
The old Wall of Games
Over the course of the next year, we discovered that the people of Kansas City loved our idea and wanted to support us – we quickly expanded our little shop to accommodate 80 people, and throughout the winter business boomed as our events and MeetUps attracted a large following of customers and grew our memberships exponentially! Most of all, we had a dynamic community growing in our space, full of wonderful people.
A full house at Southwest Boulevard
Around Spring 2017 we learned of a new space which would fit our needs better, accomodate our growing community, and allow us to serve alcohol. We signed a lease and began developing the new Pawn and Pint in secret, working into the wee hours of the morning with a group of contractors who had all signed a non-disclosure agreement. Finally, in the beginning of September, we revealed our plan to move north to the River Market.
At last, in the beginning of October 2017, we opened our doors as a bar and finally added the Pints our name had been calling for!
Settled in our new home, we are thrilled to continue offering the most amazing gaming experience we can, providing beer and board games, guided tutorials from our game gurus, and events every night, running the gamut from open play D&D, speed dating, mixers, trivia, and anything else we can think of!
A full house at our new place on Walnut!
So from all of us at Pawn and Pint: Thank you for making this possible with your continued patronage, and we look forward to playing games with you for years to come!