It's hard to believe it's been a year already!  This update is full of important information, such as a discount on memberships, an update to our operating hours, and some improvements to the business.

Membership Promotion
For the month of May, we will be offering a 10% rebate in store credit for any memberships purchased online. For example, if you purchase a $100 grail membership, you will get a $10 credit added to your member account. This promo will only be valid for the month of May so visit our membership page to renew your membership today! We extended all memberships purchased through our Kickstarter or in April or May of last year through the end of May. If you renew before you membership expires, we will just add 12 months to your current term.

Hours and Staff Update
As part of our annual review, we are rolling out some changes as of Monday, June 4th.

• Starting June 4th we will no longer be serving lunch on weekdays.  We tried really hard to make it work, but we couldn't get steady enough business to keep it going. Starting in June, we will be open at 4:00pm Monday - Friday instead of 11:00am. We will be available earlier for special events on weekdays, but will not be open for regular lunch hours. We will still serve brunch and lunch on the weekends.
  
• Our awesome Assistant Manager Doug Benson will be moving on to spend more time with his family. We are also moving our Headmistress Pam Rupinski closer to retirement. Laura Rupinski will be moving to the General Manager role, and we are promoting Jason DeWitt to kitchen manager. Jason will be making some menu updates which we expect to take place in June as well.
  

Server Call Buttons
No, I haven't forgotten about the commitments we made in the Kickstarter, we just got a bit ahead of ourselves technology-wise. I had developed server call buttons before we opened, and they didn't work consistently enough.  We have been waiting on an update to the button system before we roll it out.  Good news, the updated buttons should be rolling out before the end of the summer, assuming the new hardware does what it is supposed to do.

Window Screens
We have gotten window screens for the big windows in the main dining room, which has much improved the dining experience while the sun is out.  The A/C is working better as a result, and you should no longer have to hide from the sun.

Events
We've got a few events coming up soon, which we will be posting more about in separate posts, if you are interested, save the date, more details will follow:

• Closed after 5:00pm for a Private Event - Saturday May 19th.
  
• Rook & Rogue Up All Night for Charity - June 8th. This will be a fundraiser for Northwest Youth Services, and is being put together by an intern from WWU. We will open the pub up for ticketed guests from midnight to 10am. There will be organized activities, or you can just gather some friends for the night and play whatever you'd like. You can also obtain pledges to increase your donation. More details and tickets will be available next week, but be sure to save the date if you are interested.
  
• Fixed Menu Mystery Dinner - July 4th. We haven't got a name yet, but for the 4th of July we are doing another themed dinner similar to our New Year's Eve event.  This one will end at 9:00pm so you can get out and see the fireworks if you want to.
  
• Harry Potter's Birthday - July 31st. This year we are planning bigger and better things to celebrate the Boy Who Lived. Save the date for now, and we'll provide more details as we get closer to the date.
  

Overall Business Health
I'm not going to lie, running a restaurant is hard. We are very close to being successful, and we think that the changes that we are rolling out in June will be the final things that get us to a stable operation. That said, we can't get there without your help. Please tell your friends about us, visit us during the week, buy memberships and merchandise, and help us become the best place we can be!  You are all what make it possible for our little family business to stay open and help you connect with other people over board games, beer, and food. We appreciate you!

Thank you for an amazing year!
-Danielle

Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday(s) you are inclined to celebrate, if anything!

I have heard that lots of our customers have been asking when the "points" are coming... well, wait no longer, "points" are here!

All existing annual members have received a credit to their R&R account for 5% of their tracked spending with us up until December 25th, 2017. This should help make up for any times you forgot to present your card to get credit for a purchase, in addition to being a nice Christmas bonus for being our favorite customers. Think of it like a retroactive 5% discount on those times you did present your card.

We do not plan to give any additional credit for people who forgot to present their card prior to now.

Going forward, please present your card at the time of purchase, so your account will be credited for your purchases. You will have the option to use your account balance to pay all or part of your bill.

Our loyalty program credits annual member's R&R accounts 1% of everything you purchase. We will offer rewards increases as part of regular promotions, in addition to our regular 5% or 10% off all food and beverages for annual members on Mondays.

Annual members will also have access to Hobby and/or Grail games (depending on membership level) without incurring a daily fee.

We are going to be eliminating the "monthly" membership fee in favor of a day pass system, effective January 1st, 2018.  Anyone who was on a recurring monthly membership will be refunded for December and cancelled for January.  If you purchased a monthly membership in person December we will honor your monthly membership card through it's expiration date, but you will not be able to renew your card.

But why??? We found this program too complicated to keep track of, and it was confusing for people who were already familiar with the board game cafe/pub concept. You can still pay $5 to play a hobby game, or $10 to play a grail game, but the library fee will only be good for playing that day.

But I'm crabby about it!  We are still keeping our "casual" games absolutely free to play, and we are not increasing the prices of our annual memberships.

Thank you! If you have any questions or concerns, please speak to one of our managers in person at the pub, or you can email me at dm@rookandrogue.com.

Happy Holidays
-Danielle (Dungeon Mistress)

​So much has happened this month, it feels like it's time for a second update.

1. With the days getting longer, we are expanding our weekday hours for the Summer.  Starting tonight, we'll be open until 11:00pm on weeknights.  Our goal is to stay open as late as we've got enough paying customers, so if you want to push the needle later, the best way to do so is to join us when we're open late, and let the manager on duty know you'd like us to be open even later.
   
   
2. We rolled out our new menus!  We have expanded, and now have more appetizers, more veggie-friendly foods, and we have plans to roll out even more. Some of the highlights of the new menu include Whovian Mac & Cheese (also available with chili! and/or bacon), Poutine, and house-made mojo pork. The Rupinski ladies hail from the Florida Keys, and take mojo very seriously.  
   
   
3. We are featuring our daily specials on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and this website.  Follow us on any of those forums to keep up with what we've come up with every day.
   
   
4. We are moving the start of brunch on the weekends to 10:00am.  
   
   
5. We have setup online reservations for annual members.
   
   
6. We are planning to roll out a weekly game night, where we will pair you up with other gamers and teach new games (or just play old favorites.) Stay tuned on all our channels to find out when we get started.
   
   

We are looking for a great breakfast / egg cook for the weekends.  If you know of any one, or are one yourself, please apply on our website: www.rookandrogue.com/jobs.

So much has happened in the last month guys, sorry for the radio silence!

1. We had our grand opening and it was a huge success.  We saw several hundred of you over that weekend, and we were super touched by the support we've had from our community.  We've been collecting tons of feedback and are working on improvements.
2. We've gotten most of our air conditioner fixed (we're still working on the upstairs, which should be fixed next week.)
3. We have been testing some more recipes for our menu, and are planning to roll out version 3.0 next Monday, June 12th.
4. We are going to start offering lunch delivery with our friends at Viking Food.  
5. We've expanded our game library, and are now up to 800 titles!  We'll be working on a separate post to let you know more about some of the games we've been adding.
6. I just sent out an email for annual members to start making reservations.  If you are an annual member and you didn't receive an email, please check in with our host next time you visit, we may have a typeo in your email address.

We are still working on getting a few things spun up:

• Server call buttons and dimmable lighting (this is my big project for next weekend, fingers crossed!)
• Window shades
• Looking for group and singleton gamer opportunities
• Regular events
• Some flash discounts for annual members (coming soon!)
• Figuring out how to add legacy games to the library

Thank you all so much for all of your support.  It has been wonderful hearing how many of you feel like R&R is already a second home.  

A few things you may not know about us:

• We are open for lunch every day, and you don't have to game to enjoy a delicious, quick lunch
• We are open for brunch on the weekends, and I think we have one of the best egg cooks in town.  
• We are always all ages (except for special events which will take place in the wee small hours.)

Looking forward to seeing you soon!
Your faithful Dungeon Master, Danielle

​Hi all,

We are officially soft open!  What the heck does that mean, you might ask?  It means our staff our still in training, our systems aren't quite all online yet, and we're running a limited food and drink menu at the moment, but we are ready to serve you!  

If you dine with us, we ask you to be patient with us as we work out the kinks.  If you see something you don't love, please let us know.  We are making improvements every day.  If you love everything, please tell everyone you know.  

A few things we are still working on:

• Reservations for members
  • We will most likely release this after our grand opening.  Members will receive an email to let them know how to access the online reservation system when it becomes available.
• Server call buttons and dimmable lighting
  • These will be going live as soon as our DM can stop working on other systems. :)
• Board game buying and selling
  • We can sell games, but we haven't priced everything yet, so you'll need to be patient with us as we manually price anything you want to buy.
• Board game library tracking and menus
  • We're currently tracking games on a piece of paper rather than our database, we can search our database if you are looking for a recommendation, but we don't have printed game menus yet, or a published database for you to search.
• Organized gaming events
  • We've got some great plans for events, we just aren't quite ready to kick them off yet
• Looking for group tracking
  • We plan to implement a system to allow gamers who are looking for other people to play with a way to announce what they want to play, when, and how many slots there are.
• Merch
  • We underestimated the popularity of our hoodie, and are out of a few sizes.  We are working on remedying that. We are also commissioning a new t-shirt from a local board game illustrator.  
• The brightness of 10,000 suns
  • We have amazing floor-to-ceiling arched windows and 18' ceilings, but unless Faithlife adds another couple of floors to their building in the next two weeks, it currently means that on sunny days, we get a little bit intense. We are in the process of ordering some window coverings to improve that issue, in the meantime, we apologize if you get blasted in the face, but most of the brightness is during Happy Hour, so you can drown your sorrows.

What is working (if we do say so ourselves)

• Food!
  • We've got great pre-opening Linner and Elevenses (brunch) menus, they represent about 60% of what our final menu will include.  We have a soup of the day which we keep up to date on the site.  Once we are fully operational, we'll also have food specials posted there, but since we're so new, pretty much everything is special. 
• Dranks!
  • We've got all 10 taps flowing. You can view our tap list here.  We'll be keeping it updated as we rotate our taps.  We do a different daily cocktail special for lunch and dinner. 
• Games!
  • 98% of our games are available for playing (2% have been scheduled for board game surgery) and shelved according to their appropriate categories.  Our Game Gurus are learning new games every day, but each of them have some staples they can teach, and we have a database we can search to help you find the right game.
• Noise Levels!
  • We got one of the most important things right, I think, which is that even when we are busy, it's not too noisy to hear your friends.

UPCOMING PRIVATE EVENT
We are closed this Saturday night (May 13th) after 7:00pm for a special event. We are the hosts of BA-CON (Bellingham Anime Convention)'s VIP after party. If you are attending BA-CON and want to be part of the after party, you can find out more on their website.

MOTHER'S DAY
We are open for Mother's Day from 9am to 10pm, and it's happy hour all day.  We have an AMAZING Bloody Mary, a fantastic Bellini, and two glorious Mimosas, + games.  We are not taking reservations for Mother's Day, seating will be first-come, first-served.

Here is the much-delayed February update.  The good news is that it is not delayed because we are behind schedule, but because we've had so much to do to stay on schedule that we've hardly had a moment to tell anyone about it.

Anyway...

• Since we last posted:
  • We hit 1,000 likes on Facebook!  To celebrate, we are going to be giving away a one-year Rook Membership ($50 value) to one of our Facebook fans. To be eligible for the promotion, share this post.  We will then choose a winner at random from the people who shared.
  • We are still on track to have our grand opening in April. We are waiting to get final confirmation on some of our equipment and furniture schedules before setting the official date, but we will make an announcement soon.
  • We have ordered the rewards for our Kickstarter, and will be on track to ship them out later this month, OR hand them out in person during our grand opening event(s) in April.
  • We got our super stealthy top-secret membership cards, and they are SOooooo cool (if we do say so ourselves.)
  • We published our online job application, and started interviewing some of the literally HUNDREDS of candidates who applied to work for us.  We have been so overwhelmed and excited by the response, and we are going to have some simply amazing staff. We have some tough choices to make in the next couple of weeks.
  • We are still looking for a few good line cooks, but we are going to go ahead and close out the other positions for now.
  • Our build is going swimmingly.  We have installed the floors and walls in the kitchen, and our hood is about to go up.  We are also halfway through the install of the new floor in the dining room.  See pics at the end of this email.  Sorry there aren't more!
  • We've been tasting a LOT of local brews to start making decisions about our tap list.
  • We did a ridiculous all-day food tasting at one of our food vendors, and have some great ingredients to work with. 
  • We started building and testing the Server Call button system.
  • We are half way through building out our Point of Sale system, and we selected our credit card provider.
  • We acquired a few new board games:
    • Mint Works (Also for sale when we open)
    • Herbaceous (Also for sale when we open)
    • The Colonists
    • Grand Austria Hotel
    • Isle of Skye
    • Avenue
    • Santorini
    • La Granja No Siesta
    • Castles of Burgundy
    • Gloomhaven (this is probably staying at my house, since it's a legacy game, sorry guys)
  • We backed some new kickstarter games projects (links indicate they are still open):
    • Buy Local! The Terminator: The Official Board Game
    • Buy Local! The Last Garden - Robotanists in the Post-Apocalypse
    • Rising Sun
    • Dinosaur Island
    • Keymelequin and Keyflower
    • The World of SMOG: Rise of Moloch
    • Kingdom Death Monster 1.5
    • Shadows of Brimstone: Forbidden Fortress
    • Tiny Epic Quest

I'll plan to update again in two weeks or so.  Here's what we expect to be doing between now and then:

• ​Board Game prep
• Our build should be close to complete with equipment, furniture, flooring and walls installed and ready for our final inspections.
• We are completing the population of our POS system.
• Finalizing product selections.
• Training staff
• Shipping backer rewards for our Kickstarter.
• If we hit 2,000 Facebook likes before we open, I will give one of our Facebook fans a one-year Rogue VIP membership ($100 value)

Thanks!
R&R Dungeon Master - Danielle

Greetings All!

This months' update is a bit late, but that's because we've been hard at work!

I apologize for its length, and for the fact that it reads like an overly long speech at the Academy Awards. There are a lot of people involved in getting a small business up and running, and I need to express how grateful I am that everyone involved has been great.

Things we've done since I posted last:

• Our kickstarter funded and backer surveys have been sent. If you haven't submitted yours yet, please do so ASAP as we will be ordering the backer rewards in the first week of February.
• Superfans / friends Beth and Rosie have started adminning a Facebook community to get people talking about games at the Rook & Rogue. This will be a place to find people to game with, to talk about games in general, and to foster community around our little pub. Rook & Rogue Board Game Pub Community.
• Our SBA loan is being finalized through the absolutely amazing banking wizards at SaviBank (http://www.savibank.com/). I cannot recommend them highly enough. Getting funding for a small business is incredibly difficult, and Seana and Jillian have made every step of the process a real pleasure.
• Our Architect, Marcus Johnson, has been incredibly responsive and patient as we work through all the changes requested by the city and health department.
• Our plans were approved by our wonderful landlord, DVSAS (http://dvsas.org/), and their property representative - Jim Bjerke at Pacific Continental Realty. (http://www.pacificcontinentalrealty.com/) You don't always expect to have a great relationship with your landlord, but we have been very lucky to have great partners in Karen, Andrea and Meghan.
• Our building permits were approved by the city
• Our initial menu was approved by the Health Department
• We have begun construction with our outstanding contractor, The Franklin Corporation (www.thefranklincorporation.com). We have a very aggressive schedule for our build, and they have exceeded our expectations at every step of the way. Demo is almost complete, the new walls have been framed. Colby and Brett have made this process a breeze.
• Our bar build has begun. I don't want to give away too much, but our bar is going to be absolutely gorgeous, and make great use of our 18' ceilings in the main dining room. We are working with local millworker Price and Visser (www.priceandvisser.com/home.htm) on our custom bar. They are also a local, family business and came highly recommended.
• Our initial electrical and plumbing stub out is complete, and has passed inspection by the city.
• We have started some of the Human Resources ground work to start interviewing next month, and to have employees start training in March. We are writing job descriptions, employee manuals, and coming up with training materials. If you are interested in working for us, keep your eyes on Craigslist, or send an email with your resume to owner@rogue-raven.com, if you do that, I'll send you a courtesy email to let you know when we start hiring.
• We have finished cataloging the current board game collection on Boardgamegeek.com. We will be using this database to populate our reservations system for members and to create our game menus. As of today, the total number of board games is 549, with more trickling in every day through purchases and donations. We will also have over 100 RPG books in our library.
• As of right now, we are on schedule to have our grand opening in April. I hope to have a tentative date for our grand opening in the February update.
• My Mom Pam, our GM, has started taking over the day-to-day operations with the millions of little things that need to get done before we open. She has been an absolute rock during this pre-opening process, and I would be completely insane without her help. I am proud to say I have only made one joke about firing her. :)

What's happening next month:

• ​Board Game prep is getting more intense with tons of sleeving, varnishing, organization and prep.
• Our build should be close to complete with equipment, furniture, flooring and walls installed and ready for our final inspections.
• We are bringing in some specialists to help with our beverage selection and finish carpentry.
• We are completing the population of our POS system.
• We will be making initial product selections from our food and beverage vendors.
• We will start interviews!
• We will be ordering backer rewards for our Kickstarter.
• I'm hopeful that we will hit 1,000 likes on our Facebook page. This would be a huge milestone, and we are so excited that so many of you are as excited as we are to eat, drink, and play at the Rook & Rogue.

Here is a brief update on our progress:

• Our Kickstarter closed, with over 100 backers, over $5,000, and three stretch goals met:
  • Expanding our games library
  • Dimmable lighting by table
  • Server call buttons
• We will be sending out the Kickstarter backer surveys later this week, and will send out rewards in late March.  People who want to collect their rewards in person will receive a $5 credit to the pub.
• We've gotten provisional approval of our liquor license.
• We've submitted our building plans to the city/county.
• We're working on hiring contractors.
• We're finalizing our menus for the health department.

So far we are on track for opening in April.  We can't wait to share more details and photos as we get closer to launch.  Please subscribe to our blog to keep being updated on our progress.

You may have noticed that we changed our name from The Rogue Raven to "Rook & Rogue."

First, this was a hard decision.  We really liked our name, but we found out we were in violation of someone else's trademark.  Fortunately it was caught in time to make a change before it caused us much harm.

Finally, once we came around to the fact that we would have to re-brand, we knew we wanted to keep our logo as similar as possible, and try to bring even more "gaming" into the name.  It took us over a week to come up with our new name "Rook & Rogue."  We hope you like it.  

• Rook = another member of the crow family, but also a chess piece.
• Rogue = a scoundrel / character class in many fantasy RPGs.

Now that we've seen it in action, we like Rook & Rogue even more than our old name.

For those of you who backed our kickstarter because you liked the old name or logo, and you're just not feeling this one, please feel free to cancel your pledge, no hard feelings.  We hope you'll still come check us out when we open in April.

We are going to be cutting over all of our assets, Email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Kickstarter over the next week or so.  We appreciate your standing by us as we go through this change.

-Danielle
President and DM

Are you one of the billions* of Bellinghamsters who go out to brunch on the weekend?

We bet you are. So we are planning to offer brunch on the weekends so you can get your game on early(ish). But we will be one of the only places in town that takes reservations for parties of any size.** ​

​One of our owners is our Kitchen Overlord, Kyle Holub. He is an outstanding cook (and a frustratingly good board gamer.)

We spent many hours hotly debating whether Kyle and his kitchen minions would be forced to make hash browns from scratch every weekend. His hash browns are heavenly, but they are oh so much work. 

The  debate concluded immediately after we tasted his family recipe for corned beef hash, which we plan to offer periodically as a special.   The hashbrowns will be available every weekend though.

tl;dr -- I can confirm that we will be offering the city's best hash browns on our menu. We can't wait for you to try them. 

*pardon the hyperbole, but that's what it seems like some days.​
**Not because we are super fancy, but because we hate lines as much as you do. Reservations will be available for members only -- more details about our membership policy coming soon.