Jesus steps up to the line. He stares across the court toward Hitler, bounces the ball once, and serves. It’s smoking, and Hitler whiffs the ball despite a dramatic, somersaulting dive at the last minute. Jesus and Buddha walk off the court, whistling contentedly about their doubles win. Hitler and his teammate, Darkness, look dejected.
“Anyone up for some bowling?” asks Brendan Beninghof, a senior geography major, as he takes a sip of his organic coffee.
Before anybody can answer, Jesus is standing in front of a lane, adjusting his position. He bowls and the ball rolls straight ahead before veering into the gutter at the last minute.
“I just can’t get the spin right. I’m trying to find the sweet spot,” Beninghof says as he stares down at the small Nintendo Wii controller in his hand. He takes another sip of his coffee. “Damn, this stuff is good.”
It’s one of those ideas that you just wish you had thought of. Coffee and video games, together under one roof. What more could a college student wish for?
“They’re two very high-margin concepts,” said Matt Dabbs, one-third owner of Cafe Play, which opened last week in a two-story property between the Fox Theatre and The Sink on The Hill. “It’s the only coffee shop/video game store that I know of.”
High-margin concepts, indeed. Computer and video games are played by 69 percent of American household heads, and software sales in the United States reached $7 billion in 2005, according to the Entertainment Software Association. According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, retail sales for the specialty coffee industry totaled $7.65 billion for 2005, with 15 percent of the adult population classified as daily consumers and 60 percent as occasional consumers.
Dabbs, 24, his wife Bethany, also 24, and friend Bill Shrum, 28, decided to open their own business to combat the “corporatey” nature of the video game industry.
Dabbs and Shrum were both managing EB Games stores – Dabbs’ in Stapleton and Shrum’s in the Cherry Creek Mall – when they attended a company-wide meeting. Another attendee pointed out that while trade prices were dropping, stores continued to sell their products for the same high prices. Dabbs was disturbed when a regional manager told the crowd they would continue to charge the higher prices because, “Where else are they going to go?”
Dissatisfied with that message, the trio began looking for a place to open their own business. Market research showed that The Hill had a relatively low density of coffee shops and was home to “the exact clientele we’re shooting for,” Matt Dabbs said.
Shrum was the first to think of opening a coffee shop.
“The multiplayer gaming aspect of the new systems makes sense with a coffee-shop atmosphere,” he said.
Not surprisingly, the Nintendo Wii, which was released this year along with Sony’s PlayStation 3, is more popular than the other consoles “by at least 90 percent,” Shrum said. The Wii uses Bluetooth technology so that up to four players can play wirelessly.
In addition to the Wii and PlayStation 3, Cafe Play also has Microsoft Xbox 360 consoles and PC-LAN workstations. All are free to use for the month of December and will cost $4 per hour beginning in January.
The caf
