LYNNWOOD—For years Zulu’s Board Game Cafe in Bothell has offered local board game, trading card game, and role-play game enthusiasts a safe space to connect while indulging on great food and drink service; but now that opportunity is open to the people of Lynnwood.
At Zulu’s Board Game Cafe Lynnwood, whether new to the board gaming community or lifelong aficionados, patrons can shop for new board games or the latest hot new Magic the Gathering set from its retail space, learn a new game by grabbing one off of the free lending library (with demo instructors available by request), or pick up a beer and bite before grabbing one of the many available tables for a pickup game of your choosing.
The cafe also has aprivate room, called the ‘Dragon’s Lair’, complete with equipped sound-dampening panels so gamers can hear each other over the crowds in the main area. The Dragon’s Lair is also available to rent out for private events.
The Lynnwood Zulu’s falls within the umbrella of the Zulu’s brand but is independently owned and operated as a franchise, separate to its Bothell counterpart, with business partners Sean Flinn and Gar at the forefront of its operations.
Matt Zaremba, the owner of the Zulu’s Board Game Cafe in Bothell, and Flinn have been friends for many years so when Flinn, a software engineer by trade, began looking for a different life path, and had the “time and means” to accelerate Zaremba’s long-term plans of expansion, the pieces just came together.
“Sean and I share the same love of building community, and this [franchise] is giving me a trial run on what it takes to order multiple products for multiple locations with the ultimate goal of doing this with other people,” Zaremba told the Lynnwood Times. “The goal is not to spread the brand around but to build a playbook so other people can build a board game cafe and that community…Me and Sean are in lockstep. He’s doing great and I knew he would.”
Zaremba added that further down the road he hopes to open more franchise expansions under the Zulu name in the future.
Zulu’s Lynnwood Owner Sean Flinn is a lifelong board game fanatic and active volunteer within his community. Though he has never officially been employed at Zulu’s Board Game Cafe he has volunteered at the Bothell location for a number of years running Magic the Gathering events, board game meetups, prereleases, and teaching Klask demos at conventions like Emerald City Comic Con, Sakura Con, and PAX West.
“It just seemed like a natural path for me,” said Flinn. “I really enjoyed this space and it seemed like a good opportunity to take my passion, my skills, my DIY, my volunteerism and community-building and direct that into a new space to spread the hobby and bring as many people who are on the outskirts of even knowing these exist. I needed to get out of the corporate world and wanted to channel all of that energy into a positive, healthy, space.”
Flinn’s mission is to build the next generation of healthy gaming and gamers while steering people away from social media and their mobile phones as best as possible. The three pillars of his shop are board games number one, role-playing games second, and trading card games third. As far as tabletop war games like Warhammer go, with the not-too-distant Warhammer (formerly Games Workshop) store just down the street Flinn said it’s not necessary a priority of his but may accommodate the community contingent on feedback and the community’s needs.
“People want to be face-to-face, and I think they lost a bit of that social fiber during the pandemic, and it’s taken awhile to get back into it,” said Flinn. “My goal is just want to be a healthy, welcoming space where people can come explore at their own pace.”
Zulu’s officially announced the plan to franchise out a separate location in Lynnwood at Emerald City Comic Con back in February. After shopping for available retail around the Alderwood neighborhood the company ultimately decided on its current location at 5116 196th Street Southwest, which felt like a natural fit as this was the former site of Gamer’s Heaven and the building already had existing infrastructure set up for a board game cafe.
After permits were acquired, the team “hit the ground running,” as Flinn put it, to renovate the facility for an August 2024, opening. Zulu’s Board Game Cafe Lynnwood officially celebrated its ribbon cutting on August 9.
Now a couple months into operation, Flinn notified the Lynnwood Times that it’s been a lot of community engagement to make adjustments tailored to their patrons’ needs and to prepare for the upcoming busy holiday shopping season.
In addition to its retail, board game library, playing space, and game demos, Zulu’s Lynnwood offers a selection of alcoholic beverages and food including beer, wine, pizza, burgers, mini corndogs, mozzarella sticks, and nachos.
The idea was to initially bring onboard a Michelin Star chef to design a food menu, Flinn told the Lynnwood Times, but when their commute to Lynnwood ended up being too taxing, the cafe resorted to simple items that could be prepared in a much smaller, and limited, kitchen space than the Bothell location.
Unique to the Lynnwood location, however, is an entire bubble tea menu which is a passion of both co-owners Gar and Flinn. The decision to offer bubble tea was one of the first decisions made, as far as food operations go, to stand apart from Zulu’s Bothell while offering a delicious option that wouldn’t take too much operational overhead.
The food menu is still something the Board Game Cafe plans to expand as it gets more of a handle on its core operations.
Zulu’s Board Game Cafe hosts daily events in addition to prereleases for new trading card game sets – such as Pokémon, MtG, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Lorcana. The cafe also has an active Discord server where gamers can organize games, meetups, and more. For a complete calendar of upcoming events and a link to join the Discord server visit: www.zuluslynnwood.com
