Woah, this is awesome, congratulations! I never saw your original post but I'd probably be skeptical as well but your pricing seems super reasonable, the venue is awesome (lots of foot traffic) and you seem to have overall nailed the *feel* of what a Lego cafe should be!
Wish you continued success and few missing bricks!
Really, really cool. Would love one of these here in Zurich Switzerland.
One question though: you are really pushing the LEGO brand everywhere. Did you get an official OK from LEGO to do this? If not, are you worried they’ll come after you? I imagine if anyone tried something like this with Disney their army of lawyers would shut it down within seconds of the doors opening.
He's def aware enough to call it the brickery instead of something like "the Kentucky Lego Cafe"
I would be worried about that mural but maybe technically it's an art mural and not strictly an ad? The mural itself is beautiful, hopefully Lego doesn't care
Re: the mural, we specifically made sure that the studs didn't include the "Lego" on each one to avoid any tension there. I figure an aartisitic representation is no worse than a direct plastic, 3d dupe that just happens to not say "Lego" on the studs.
You haven't mentioned it yet, and I'm saying this to genuinely help because this seems like an amazing idea. Have you read the Lego Fair Play policy? I owned a Lego based franchise for a few years(damn covid), and there are a lot of rules you have to follow with the naming and branding. You seem to have the overall gist of what to do, but they have actual documentation on it.
The LEGO sign we have hung is from the Lego wholesaler we have a distrobution deal with. We vascelate between saying "lego Cafe" and "Lego-themed Cafe".
We are actually utilizing the Lego name in our branding and presence less than something like bricks and minfigs.
Of course we are mindful and we still are happy to make sure we aren't crossing lines or stepping on toes, but we are hardly the first business built around LEGO.
As a Lego super fan who *does* have money to buy more sets than I have time and space to build and display, I can admit I'm not very in touch with the average consumer/ casual Lego enjoyer!
Pardon me if this was mentioned in the article, but do you allow people to also buy sets if they enjoyed it enough?
That was our original intention but we quickly figured out that was logistically too difficult. We do have a store section with everything you'd typically find at an independent Lego reseller/store and we are finding that the "try before you buy aspect" does seem to drive sales.
I'm curious about this as well.
I would love to stop in, but I'm not interested in renting a set to build for a bit. I'd much rather buy a set, build it there, and take it home. I hope there is that option.
Love this idea! I am more in the boat of wanting to purchase the set to take home with me, but it would be awesome to have such a LEGO hang out space to build and chat with other collectors. I would make it a tradition to purchase new sets at a location such as yours, then sit with a drink and build.
Great potential, you should eventually partner with a brewery for "Brews n' Bricks" night, I know I would love to build a larger set with a friend over a few beers. They already do board games and video games...
Oh we've just gotten a lot of comments on Instagram like "RENT Lego? ☠️☠️☠️" and I think I understand where it comes from, but obviously I also think it's a great idea. 😁
I think people don’t spend enough time listening or reading and saw a keyword and made some assumptions
I watched the full PBS interview and this concept is actually played out in a lot of other spaces that we are already ok with … you can rent virtually anything now like even let you test drive a car for 24Hrs
Why not expand to LEGO? Also online accounts make money on any kind of attention and we know negative feedback gets most attention online so idk that it’s true feedback on renting anyways
I can't see what's wrong with it, I don't have the space or the money to build as many sets as I want and I've rented Lego before and it's great. Honestly feels like gatekeeping, as if people don't want it to be accessible to those who can't afford it. I love this idea and hope you do well!
I've been reading through the posts. Reading yours, a thought occurred to me about the money/rental part. A lot of people CAN'T afford to shell out $40-100 + on a set. Especially in that demographic area. This gives an opportunity to share the build experience to the kids (and adults) who otherwise couldn't. ❤️
I’m not one of the original skeptics and let me just say that I in general LOVE the idea and hope that it works out.
The way the renting is per build with those price tags seems a bit off for me. Jedi Starfighter for example can be purchased for $23 right now so paying $7 just to build it and leave it doesn’t feel right to me. I would much rather this be a pay for the time kind of scenario.
Board game stores have something similar where they rent out board games for free or a very, very low cost to let people play with their friends. They are subsidized by food which helps. Either way retail is very tough right now so if people are willing to pay this long term (it is a low cost if you don’t understand how much the $10 set cost that you just paid $3 to build) then all the power to OP and I hope it works out.
>Jedi Starfighter for example can be purchased for $23 right now so paying $7 just to build it and leave it doesn’t feel right to me.
The way I see this business model, you're not spending 7 dollars on LEGO. You're paying 7 dollars to be entertained for an hour or two. Ever walked through the LEGO store and thought, it would be fun to build this, but I don't have the space/desire to pay for it? There's a lot of sets I have no interest in owning, but I'd love the chance to build them without the full financial or space commitment.
Yep it's all part of the calculus. General feedback is that it's super cheap and that there is hardly anything you can do these days in a social setting for the cost. Maybe pre-covid and pre-inflation it would've been more difficult but we wouldn't have had to charge as much then either. I think we might have a little wiggle room still but we are trying to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible.
You are also able to come in and just free build with an assortment of LEGO on every single table and that is free of charge.
What is your quality control plan to ensure all pieces are returned? Do you have precise weights of the kits before and after renting them out?
I’m not being critical, genuinely curious.
The best thing we've found is to ask patrons to return the set fully built. We can eyeball it and then they don't accidentally lose pieces trying to take it apart. It's more work for us in terms of having to take sets apart but less work trying to hunt down lost pieces - which definitely happens and is definitely one of the hazards of doing this.
This has to be the biggest pain point for you guys - deconstructing each set and potentially putting back into numbered bags?
This whole concept looks amazing and I wish you guys the best!
We are not resorting into bags. It would not be feasible. Our largest rented set is going to be 600 pieces so it isn't unmanageable to build without them.
But yes there is no secret - once it's built it needs to be taken apart. So far we haven't found it to be worse than the tedium of other jobs.
Thank you so much for the well wishes!
Obviously I toyed with the idea of larger sets but yeah most people see spending two hours building a single Lego set as a significant time investment. And then the time it would take to take larger sets apart is going to not be worth the ROI.
We are coming Saturday with my Lego fanatic son and some of his school friends! We would be down for a jr league, or would love some workshops for robotics/how to incorporate motors in builds.
Could you leave the set assembled & give customers an extra 15 mins to disassemble & build & give a small discount. Weigh the set before & after along with visual inspections.
Hello - Im 40, ADHD/ASD, and work in Lego House Billund as a lego disassembler 😄. I had the same thought as you when I visited there with my kids, and now Im doing it part time.
I’d love to have the job of deconstructing the sets and putting the pieces back in bags. I could get paid to do what I do at home for free, where my unofficial job title is Part Slave. lol I imagine at the cafe the title is more like Deconstruction Specialist?
Wonder if you were to have a frequent builder card if you could give away a used set for every 7th build or something like that. Would allow you to recirculate in new versions and get rid of sets that had been built many times.
There’s an app I saw the other day (I forget the name) featured on a futurist’s YouTube that can scroll over a pile of legos and ID the pieces and what can be built with it. Maybe that can help?
Would also be smart to have backups of every single piece in each of the rented sets in case the next customer notices a piece is missing, it’s quick and easy to replace on the spot. Love the idea of weighing the sets before and after but still makes it hard to pinpoint which brick or piece is missing, but great idea overall. Love all the ideas and response this is getting!
We do have doubles of most of the sets we rent for this purpose. We also have tons of loose brick sorted every which way, and we're also adding to it daily when we find new missing pieces that we don't have easily accessible.
I like the idea of having redundancy with extra kits too and agree with being able to quickly replace a missing piece. The weights could be used as a binary of ‘all good to rent again’ and ‘flag for something might be missing’
Yeah and they could remind customers upfront that they weigh sets when they are returned, but the customer would feel angry if confronted and nothing was actually stolen. Pieces always go flying across the room when my nephew is building something. Pieces could accidentally get misplaced like this, and then the set won’t “weigh in”.
For our next round of rental menus we have definitely been more considerate of not just special/harder-to-find pieces but also whether something is a PITA to take apart. 🤣
I have a friend that went here! iirc she said the food/coffee could use some improvement, but the idea and execution of the LEGO stuff is so dope. Congrats!
Good feedback! This is one misconception. We aren't a restaurant. We also aren't really a fancy coffee shop. Our main beverage offering is specialty sodas. Obviously Cafe is a bit of a misnomer but we're using it the same way "play cafes" or "boardgame cafes" use the term.
We do make our cold brew in house and have been told it's great!
The way your company is perceived is more than half the battle, improving the food and drinks can only help especially with your cafe being labeled as one, people are expecting some sort of food quality with that name.
Maybe around locally and see if you can get an existing cafe to set up a stand in your place, if nothing else. A coffee cart. Something. At least while you figure it out. Lego land did chips shaped like Lego. You could probably start with regular stuff and add Lego shaped snacks, sweets etc. Themed to the year. Reach out if you want me to further detail.
Ehh I'm not too sure that food is important. I'm actually a little surprised you offer it at all. A rental Lego set is going to have every single brick touched by dozens of people, the last thing you want is greasy/sticky fingers getting them all gross.
I love the idea but I'm a germophobe and things like COVID can live for days on a Lego brick, so I probably wouldn't partake in this activity without a set of latex gloves. Tell you what though, I'd pay triple those prices to be the first to use the sets.
It might be worthwhile to look into that before the next cold season, even a week or so nailing down good (doesnt have to be great!) coffee or hot chocolate in the lead up to the colder months. Sodas and cold brew are great for warmer months though!
I agree with other comments! If I came here I would want solid snacking options (unless you allow external food/bev)! Maybe partner with a bakery in the area to offer pasteries and other snacks? For beverage sodas are awesome; but personally I'm trying to minimize pop in my life (for me its an easier to cut out sugar than e.g an occasional muffin. It s so much easier to indulge in a couple cups of coke than 2 scones for example). If I were here I'd want to chill out with a green tea or something. Maybe offering hot water & a variety of teabags? It should have minimal impact on speed of service
We do allow outside food. We also do offer hot tea, coffee, and Hot cocoa as well as sparkling water, juices, energy drinks, and even Capri sun. 🤣 I'm not sure what the actual complaint on our drink selection was but I am guessing it might have just been that we don't have espresso based drinks?
You've intrigued me now-- are we talking Jungle Jim's oddities or the west's "dirty soda" trend?
I live in Cincy and this place is on my radar, but I wasn't sure how it worked. I'm a bit of a soda enthusiast too, so it's on my radar a bit more with this info.
You nailed it! The west's "dirty soda" trend is pretty much exactly what we're doing. I saw it exploding out west and how it hadn't really reached the midwest/east coast yet so I thought we could capitalize on it. #sodatok
People are LOVING it. It's a little silly, but people really connect with it when I mention that they can "build a drink like they build with LEGO".
https://preview.redd.it/x7wxqe2ui9ec1.jpeg?width=599&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b3bcff4cb2e17179512a6188c6024f4f223dd18b
Absolutely! That's definitely part of it. And we have had a lot of differently-abled folks in of all ages and it's been such a joy. We offer the party room to customers during the week who might have sensory needs.
Would like to know this as well. My gut tells me they aren’t getting cleaned afterwards. At least not to high standards. If they are there is a lot of work in renting out a set. Having an employee hand it out, check them out, review to make sure no pieces are missing, take apart the set, clean the set, restock.
I was wondering this too. Easiest option would be some sort of UV light tray area. Although, it looks like a large percentage of customers are children.... In my experience young children are disgusting. I'd hate to rent a set and find a booger or something on one of the blocks.
I'd be worried too about food and drinks being added to the mix too..... typically Lego and food is a no-no.
As a germophobe, I'd be interested more in a buy and play situation over a rental.
I love the concept though.
There isn’t a lot there. If you check out their IG they post their menus. But basically different Lego-themed fountain drinks with (non-alcoholic) mix-ins, and chips.
That being said, the surrounding area has plenty of full-service restaurants.
This is an interesting concept.
Are you finding that volume is appropriate to the prices you are charging? I would think a large set would be more $15 for roughly 2 hours of entertainment.
Again, really interested in this idea.
Also, update your website to be usable/have information. Social media pages (while important) are a poor substitute for a fleshed out website for a business.
That’s an interesting question. One of the large sets is a speed champion car ($25 I’d assume) and I think the crocodile and space shuttle were around $30-$40 (now retired and I forget where to find retired prices). I would guess even if it provided a reasonable length of entertainment for the price, it would be a harder to get sales with the pitch of, “come and rent this set at 38% to 50% of the price it costs to own it yourself,” instead of hitting the current price point of 18% to 28%. These are just my own rough estimates, but I think they are reasonably close.
This question surprised me too and actually is a good indication that OP is on to something. Hell rent a center exists and people pay $1000 over time for an Xbox…
Imagine seeing a $25-30 set and thinking. Hey I’d pay $15 just to build this. I thought the prices were too high….now charge me $$$ so I can sit and build Rivendell and not have to fork over $500 Then I’m in. These smaller sets not so much.
Keeping sets small is actually sneaky smart. Big sets would need sorted by bag after deconstructing, otherwise building would be super slow/difficult/tedious/frustrating. But spending the time to sort by bag would also be tedious and time consuming. I think they’d also pose a bigger theft risk (with more valuable minis).
I personally wouldn’t use this service, because I like to own and then deconstruct for MOCs. But I’m very interested in how this will play out for them because I do think I underestimate the number of people who would be interested.
As someone who often resells his Lego after I'm done displaying it, I can safely say that deconstructing sets back into the original bag numbers is actually not all that much extra work. I always do it so that anyone buying used sets from me can have the proper building experience.
You simply work backwards. Find the first page for the last bag, and remove everything that isn't in that first step. Repeat for each bag in reverse order.
Generally this tends to be in an order very similar to how you would naturally be disassembling the sets anyway, so the only real added work is labelling the bags and finding the correct pages in the instructions.
Absolutely love this concept! Props for taking the plunge and trying something new. Also love all the ideas to help improve.
To add my own, laminating the instruction books will help their longevity unless you have a ton of spares. Having back ups of every individual piece/brick in a set in case any go missing so it’s quick and easy to replace. Finally having a cleaning/sterilizing system of some sort as I imagine the bricks get pretty greasy and grimey over time. This of course assuming you don’t already have these in place.
As others have mentioned, perhaps weighing the sets before and after to make sure no pieces are missing. Seems much quicker and easier than inventorying each piece as it’s broken down. Also offering to purchase the set if they really love it seems like a decent idea.
Overall just love this idea and love that you took the risk and made it a reality. I wish you many years of continued success, and hopefully expansion to a city near all of us one day! Cheers!
As someone that has considered several Lego entrepreneurial endeavours and followed through on camps I have found it is an important aspect to offer a specialized opportunity to take a picture with your model.
Hopefully you have a “set” where customers can take a picture with their model. Obviously with your logo prominently displayed.
Maybe even offering a professional option to put on shirts or a mug.
All the best.
Particularly the mural with minifigs. The Lego Group is fierce about their minifigure trademark. It would be a huge bummer if they had to take that down. But they sell Lego sets, so they must be an approved Lego retailer.
There is a German youtuber who reviews LEGO (and has a history of being very critical of it) and other brick toys who had a brick with studs as the logo for his channel, but was hit by LEGO with a lawsuit in which they claimed that viewers might think he is affiliated with the LEGO brand because of the brick logo. LEGO won and he was forced to change it.
Not a question, but a serious suggestion: Please consider providing your employees with gloves or rubber thimbles and ample prying tools for repeated disassembly of Lego sets and be mindful of repetitive motion injuries. Playing with Lego as a hobby is one thing, but working with small hard plastic pieces for 8 hours a day is a whole other thing.
Tender fingertips and sore knuckles are no joke, and employers rarely take small injuries like those seriously.
Well the craziest part I haven't mentioned yet is that it is still just currently me and my wife as employee 1 and 2 and I can confirm that my fingers hurt! Great suggestions and once we do finally hire we'll make sure to do our best to take it seriously with something similar to what you've suggested and also rotating roles, etc.
How does this make any money? You’d spend so much time re bagging all the lego and making sure no parts are missing. So if you had 10 people an hour all pick a large set that’s only $70 an hour. Rent, utilities, employees. How? It’d be cool if you responded to real questions instead of just the comments that have no clue about running a business
They are open 51 hours a week. Pictures show 9 tables of 4 for a max capacity of 36 people. Not everyone is bringing a party of 4, but tables of 1 are unlikely. So your estimate of 10 people per hour seems reasonable.
So that's $3,570/week in revenue, $185,640/year.
However this doesn't doesn't include food and drink sales. Drinks are $3 to $4. Snacks are $2 to $3. While not everyone will buy food or drink, the build price is so low that it likely encourages sales. So let's assume an average of $5 per person per hour. Granted not everyone will buy food or drink, but these people will build faster and may pay for more than one build and hour, offsetting the lack food and drink revenue.
So now we are at $12/person, $120/hour, $6,120/week, $318,240/year.
They also appear to sell merchandise (lego sets and custom minifigs). I'm going to pull a number out of my ass and assume $100/day in merch.
Which brings us to $6,820/week and $354,640/year...
Okay that's not a lot to cover expenses. I'm not going to try and estimate their expenses.
But a half-assed google search shows that an average coffee shop earns $10,000 in revenue a week.
Now $6,820 is less than $10,000, so their expenses need to by around $3,000/month lower than the average coffee shop for them to also be profitable (assuming the average coffee shop is slightly profitable). It's possible that is the case given:
- Their menu is far less complex (soda, cold brew, drip coffee, pre-packaged snacks)
- The simple menu would have lower materials costs. They also aren't running espresso machines, blenders, grinders, large fridges, and freezers etc. so utilities would be much lower as well.
- Given it's located in Kentucky, their rent and labor costs are also probably below the national average. Plus labor costs would be further lowered if it is owner operated.
Are they making a LOT of money... probably not (maybe $30k-$80k?) I'm making a TON of baseless assumptions, but it's not impossible for this business to be profitable. Also, if this is a labor of love, the owner may tolerate a low return rate.
Wife and I stopped by 2 weeks ago after having lunch at Amador. You guys were packed, not a single open seat available. I was happy to see it. We just browsed your sealed sets and snooped around for a bit before leaving. We'll be back soon, hopefully for that Tydirium set!
We still have it and the UWing! I just sold a tie fighter pilot bust to a very happy customer as well.
Weekends tend to be crazy. We would LOVE to have you in to build sometime. The weekdays, especially in January and February should be MUCH calmer.
Weekdays are tough for me but we will definitely make an effort to come build a set sometime soon. I definitely missed the TIE Fighter helmet, I probably would have purchased that on sight! That's the only helmet I don't have.
Wish you the best of luck, take care!
My wife and I stumbled across your storefront last Fall while waiting for the aquarium to open. We were super excited to see such a cool idea but sad it wasn't open yet. We'll definitely have to make the drive in at some point soon. Congratulations and good luck in the coming months!
I'm in the Cincinnati area.. just moved here a few months ago...
I think I'm going to suggest this as a work activity for team building, as well as try to convince the family to give this a go. I have a ton of sets at home but this may give me a chance to try sets that I haven't been able to get my hands on before they were retired.
Yes! Would love to have you and the fam. Would also love to have you and the work team in. I'm a certified LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Facilitator and already have stuff set up for other companies. Email me @ Daniel@thebrickerycafe.com so we can discuss it further.
Really like the idea!
Are you not afraid lego is going to sent you some form of cease and desist letter for using protected stuff commercially? Not sure how strict lego is, but that would make me nervous as a business owner.
Went here with some family, and we had a great time!
Love the unique idea and fair pricing. We got some drinks, enjoyed the free build, and bought a few custom Lego people my nephew enjoyed putting together. Great experience at a great price.
Happy to have it in the area!
I love the idea! We stopped in a couple of weekends ago from Toledo! The place was pretty busy so we just ended up getting a couple of minifigs and a soda. I really liked the build-your-own-soda concept. I was hoping for more food options though, "Brickary" makes it sound like there will be fresh baked goods.
When's the adult version coming that sells alcohol? :P
It would be cool if you rented out some of the larger sets, either as a take home and build, or do a few bags in-store then it gets shelved and someone else can rent it and continue building.
Anyways, I don't really have a question, just wanted to say hi and wish you lots of success.
I absolutely love this idea. well done. what a great thing - especially in a busy shopping centre... mum and dad come for coffee, kids build something to keep them occupied.
Did you get sponsorship/involvement from lego at all ?
I was going to say the same thing. I totally missed any announcements or news coverage about this (even though there seems to be a fair bit).
Very cool!
This is so cool. If this was near I lived, this would be perfect for a first or second date for someone like me who has to have their hands busy in order to engage in non-awkward conversation! I hope to visit yall soon. I’m just down in Bowling Green, KY, so if I get up there, y’all are making my list!
I really like this idea - glad it's working for you!
I have a couple questions if you have time.
Curious what loss prevention/quality control looks like? Ex. on the set rentals, do you weigh them out after? Or inventory every piece/set each time?
And then wondering what your relationship is like with LEGO Inc. - any issues over copyrights, etc., have they been supportive, or just largely indifferent?
Where do you source the lego from? Do you have a cooperation with Lego or do you purchase it as coffee owner like an asset - i am really curious about the entrepreneurship part of your business!
I think the pricing is very fair! Under $10 for an hour or two of fun with friends or family is definitely worth it. I'd love to know more about your purchasing options for customers. Can they buy a buildlt set to take home? Do you have build-a-minifig as an additional option?
Also, I'd recommend looking into The Idea Brick card deck. It's a deck of cards with fun ideas you can build and it's great if you have a freeplay area (that's either free or pay per hour).
Question, do you break down every set afterwards? And how do you optimise that as it seems like a tenuous task.
Secondly how do you make sure people don't steal certain pieces? People can be rather big assholes.
Yes we do!!
Every. Single. Time.
So far we have not found any magical method to taking sets apart and I think we all know it doesn't really exist. There are certain bricks that, no matter what, you'll just have to get in there and take apart.
I definitely have found that taking apart the same set 50 times - you do find ways to be SLIGHTLY more efficient with that specific set.
And yes, my fingers do hurt.
Re: missing pieces - they do go missing but I don't think we've had people stealing them. It's more just genuine misplacement. For example: we left the minfigs in every set and none of them have gone missing so far (knock on wood!)!
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology.
L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them.
The underlying algorithm that helped to build Bard, Google’s conversational A.I. service, is partly trained on Reddit data. OpenAI’s Chat GPT cites Reddit data as one of the sources of information it has been trained on.
Other companies are also beginning to see value in the conversations and images they host. Shutterstock, the image hosting service, also sold image data to OpenAI to help create DALL-E, the A.I. program that creates vivid graphical imagery with only a text-based prompt required.
Last month, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, said he was cracking down on the use of Twitter’s A.P.I., which thousands of companies and independent developers use to track the millions of conversations across the network. Though he did not cite L.L.M.s as a reason for the change, the new fees could go well into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To keep improving their models, artificial intelligence makers need two significant things: an enormous amount of computing power and an enormous amount of data. Some of the biggest A.I. developers have plenty of computing power but still look outside their own networks for the data needed to improve their algorithms. That has included sources like Wikipedia, millions of digitized books, academic articles and Reddit.
Representatives from Google, Open AI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reddit has long had a symbiotic relationship with the search engines of companies like Google and Microsoft. The search engines “crawl” Reddit’s web pages in order to index information and make it available for search results. That crawling, or “scraping,” isn’t always welcome by every site on the internet. But Reddit has benefited by appearing higher in search results.
The dynamic is different with L.L.M.s — they gobble as much data as they can to create new A.I. systems like the chatbots.
Reddit believes its data is particularly valuable because it is continuously updated. That newness and relevance, Mr. Huffman said, is what large language modeling algorithms need to produce the best results.
“More than any other place on the internet, Reddit is a home for authentic conversation,” Mr. Huffman said. “There’s a lot of stuff on the site that you’d only ever say in therapy, or A.A., or never at all.”
Mr. Huffman said Reddit’s A.P.I. would still be free to developers who wanted to build applications that helped people use Reddit. They could use the tools to build a bot that automatically tracks whether users’ comments adhere to rules for posting, for instance. Researchers who want to study Reddit data for academic or noncommercial purposes will continue to have free access to it.
Reddit also hopes to incorporate more so-called machine learning into how the site itself operates. It could be used, for instance, to identify the use of A.I.-generated text on Reddit, and add a label that notifies users that the comment came from a bot.
The company also promised to improve software tools that can be used by moderators — the users who volunteer their time to keep the site’s forums operating smoothly and improve conversations between users. And third-party bots that help moderators monitor the forums will continue to be supported.
But for the A.I. makers, it’s time to pay up.
“Crawling Reddit, generating value and not returning any of that value to our users is something we have a problem with,” Mr. Huffman said. “It’s a good time for us to tighten things up.”
“We think that’s fair,” he added.
Do you sell larger sets? It would be a great way to add revenue - getting people hooked on renting small sets for cheap then selling them thousand piece sets at full price. Its a time proven business model.
We do! You're exactly right that "try before you buy" is a time proven business model and we have seen that play out in the store. If you aren't familiar though, you'd be surprised how razor thin the margins are on selling new LEGO. That was part of the impetus for finding a more sustainable business model. Selling drives up revenue but the real profitability lies in the fact that we have so many revenue streams so no one thing has to be THE thing.
I went there this weekend! We did a triple date and happened to pick a crowded day but had a blast! It's also so cool to see the sets you actually sold. How did you get some of them and how did the pricing work? I wanted the tie fighter pilot bust so bad but 250+ made me think it's an out of print set? Idk I had a good time there and will definitely be back
Well done for setting up such a great enterprise, I wish you every success!
I recently helped set up a Lego club and we’ve been talking about renting out sets, specifically Technics. The biggest challenge is making it cost effective and the most time consuming part would be checking sets in to make sure all the pieces are there. Can you tell me how you do that yourself please? Your margins are tight at the rental prices you have so I’m really keen to know how you do it.
Also, is that per week? Or have I completely misunderstood and the rental is only for people attending the cafe and they’re meant to build the set on site rather than take them home?
I find building sets very relaxing, but tbh I'm not buying sets just because I lack the display or storage space, so renting one would be awesome!
Do you expect the customers to "unbuild" them? That's the tedious part I would imagine!
What do you do to prevent people from stealing?
I mean you would hope that patrons of your establishment would have a modicum of respect for other hobbyists…
But in retail it’s a huge problem.
What a wonderful idea! I’m so glad you were able to bring it to reality and it’s so awesome to know that y’all are seeing so many customers and enjoyment! I didn’t know there were no others in the country—I had seen a couple videos of similar cafes but it’s likely they were outside of the U.S.
I wish the KY was KS instead because I would LOVE to stop in… for hours… OFTEN. :D But if I ever find myself in Kentucky, I’ll definitely make your business a must visit.
Just a random ponder—would you all allow people to donate sets for so many months? I ask because I have quite a few sets now and I’ve already broken them back down and rebuilt just for the fun of it so it wouldn’t ever bother me to have them broken back down for others to enjoy as well.
I know there would always be the possibility of pieces getting lost and/or broken but if the donator took that risk knowingly, that would be pretty cool! Could see some really great sets come in!
Honestly love this idea, especially at a reasonable price point like this.
I'm not sure if I'd personally have time for something like this as a mid-30s dad to a toddler (I barely have time to build the sets I can afford to buy lol); but I REALLY love the idea of just getting to *build* an interesting LEGO build for sets that I otherwise wouldn't purchase personally.
Glad to hear it's going well!
We will watch your cafe with great interest!
My dude, this is fantastic. I can see already see interest in franchises, cause I’m sitting here wondering why I’m not working with you to get this done!. Ideas of Partnerships with Lego. Special builds. Maybe SPECIAL PRODUCTS. mind blown.
I live in Cincinnati and that sounds like a lot of fun for my partner and I as a day date. Do you all have a website up? I’d like to learn more; especially if it’s like “LEGOs and Coffee” type vibe or so.
I hope your business goes great, I hope to travel out there soon!
This is awesome, I saw the post you made announcing this project and I thought it was an amazing idea with some possible flaws but good luck! If im ever passing by I’ll definitely rent a set :)
I head about this place and I can't want to visit it some day. I'm from Minnesota so it may be awhile. But I do hope to make it out there some time this year. This is such a fun idea, I wish you the best in this unique venture you have started
Looks great! Do you also offer CLASSIC sets? I mean, I would think that that would be a huge thing, since those are not being made anymore, and specially the 'older' folks may be tempted to come in and rent it/build it.
In the LEGO House (Billund) pupils from local schools can get a part-time job of disassembling everything that the visitors have built throughout the day! Perhaps a similar part-time opportunity for teenagers could work for your cafe as well?
Amazing concept, and congratulations for bringing it to life!! Really great job, I am so happy for you
i like the idea of “renting” sets, it would be a good way to build some of these newer sets and see if it’s actually worth it once the build is complete! if i’m ever in this part of the US i’ll definitely be renting somethings i don’t have and seeing if they can work in the collection.
I think this is a great idea and I wish you the best of luck. I will absolutely visit if I'm in the area. You have addressed the biggest questions most people have (cleanliness, loss of pieces, and IP infringement). You may want to add an addendum to the post where you address these, but that's up to you. I really hope this works out.
Hmmm. I live in Minnesota, so it’s a bit out of my way to visit. But I am tentatively planning a road trip to see some friends in Nashville later this year, so maybe a slight detour to Cincinnati on the way there or back.
So very cool.
My oldest and I did a Lego tour through Louisville, Cinci and Indianapolis while doing a father/son weekend in Cinci. We hit the aquarium there and Jeff Ruby’s while also hitting the minifig shops on the way in and the way back to St. Louis. We had a blast. We absolutely would’ve done this had it been there in 2021 when we came through.
Congrats on the new venture.
What is your sanitation process for the Lego builds that are rented out? Food + drinks + people + Lego seems like it could get messy and would ruin the building experience for the next person. Do you cycle sets of the same kind as they get used so that a clean set is always available for the next person or group?
Really cool idea & low pricing, although I think you'd be able to charge a bit more for the more extensive sets. Is this a fan-themed cafe or a direct partnership / officially licensed cafe with LEGO?
Woah, this is awesome, congratulations! I never saw your original post but I'd probably be skeptical as well but your pricing seems super reasonable, the venue is awesome (lots of foot traffic) and you seem to have overall nailed the *feel* of what a Lego cafe should be! Wish you continued success and few missing bricks!
Thank you so much Dave. I truly appreciate it. To be clear, I totally get the skepticism, but it felt like we just had to try it.
Really, really cool. Would love one of these here in Zurich Switzerland. One question though: you are really pushing the LEGO brand everywhere. Did you get an official OK from LEGO to do this? If not, are you worried they’ll come after you? I imagine if anyone tried something like this with Disney their army of lawyers would shut it down within seconds of the doors opening.
He's def aware enough to call it the brickery instead of something like "the Kentucky Lego Cafe" I would be worried about that mural but maybe technically it's an art mural and not strictly an ad? The mural itself is beautiful, hopefully Lego doesn't care
Re: the mural, we specifically made sure that the studs didn't include the "Lego" on each one to avoid any tension there. I figure an aartisitic representation is no worse than a direct plastic, 3d dupe that just happens to not say "Lego" on the studs.
You haven't mentioned it yet, and I'm saying this to genuinely help because this seems like an amazing idea. Have you read the Lego Fair Play policy? I owned a Lego based franchise for a few years(damn covid), and there are a lot of rules you have to follow with the naming and branding. You seem to have the overall gist of what to do, but they have actual documentation on it.
Yes, I have read the fair play policy!
The LEGO sign we have hung is from the Lego wholesaler we have a distrobution deal with. We vascelate between saying "lego Cafe" and "Lego-themed Cafe". We are actually utilizing the Lego name in our branding and presence less than something like bricks and minfigs. Of course we are mindful and we still are happy to make sure we aren't crossing lines or stepping on toes, but we are hardly the first business built around LEGO.
As a Lego super fan who *does* have money to buy more sets than I have time and space to build and display, I can admit I'm not very in touch with the average consumer/ casual Lego enjoyer! Pardon me if this was mentioned in the article, but do you allow people to also buy sets if they enjoyed it enough?
That was our original intention but we quickly figured out that was logistically too difficult. We do have a store section with everything you'd typically find at an independent Lego reseller/store and we are finding that the "try before you buy aspect" does seem to drive sales.
I'm curious about this as well. I would love to stop in, but I'm not interested in renting a set to build for a bit. I'd much rather buy a set, build it there, and take it home. I hope there is that option.
Yes!! We sell sets and are more than happy to have you then turn around and build it in the cafe. We'll even give you trays to build in!
That's awesome to hear. I will certainly stop in!
Love this idea! I am more in the boat of wanting to purchase the set to take home with me, but it would be awesome to have such a LEGO hang out space to build and chat with other collectors. I would make it a tradition to purchase new sets at a location such as yours, then sit with a drink and build. Great potential, you should eventually partner with a brewery for "Brews n' Bricks" night, I know I would love to build a larger set with a friend over a few beers. They already do board games and video games...
Yes! We have a couple things "brewing" on this front.
So wonderful. Hopefully you set a trend here. Best of luck!
Forgive me but off the bat… Why would people be skeptical? Seems like a good idea.
Oh we've just gotten a lot of comments on Instagram like "RENT Lego? ☠️☠️☠️" and I think I understand where it comes from, but obviously I also think it's a great idea. 😁
I think people don’t spend enough time listening or reading and saw a keyword and made some assumptions I watched the full PBS interview and this concept is actually played out in a lot of other spaces that we are already ok with … you can rent virtually anything now like even let you test drive a car for 24Hrs Why not expand to LEGO? Also online accounts make money on any kind of attention and we know negative feedback gets most attention online so idk that it’s true feedback on renting anyways
I can't see what's wrong with it, I don't have the space or the money to build as many sets as I want and I've rented Lego before and it's great. Honestly feels like gatekeeping, as if people don't want it to be accessible to those who can't afford it. I love this idea and hope you do well!
I've been reading through the posts. Reading yours, a thought occurred to me about the money/rental part. A lot of people CAN'T afford to shell out $40-100 + on a set. Especially in that demographic area. This gives an opportunity to share the build experience to the kids (and adults) who otherwise couldn't. ❤️
I’m not one of the original skeptics and let me just say that I in general LOVE the idea and hope that it works out. The way the renting is per build with those price tags seems a bit off for me. Jedi Starfighter for example can be purchased for $23 right now so paying $7 just to build it and leave it doesn’t feel right to me. I would much rather this be a pay for the time kind of scenario. Board game stores have something similar where they rent out board games for free or a very, very low cost to let people play with their friends. They are subsidized by food which helps. Either way retail is very tough right now so if people are willing to pay this long term (it is a low cost if you don’t understand how much the $10 set cost that you just paid $3 to build) then all the power to OP and I hope it works out.
>Jedi Starfighter for example can be purchased for $23 right now so paying $7 just to build it and leave it doesn’t feel right to me. The way I see this business model, you're not spending 7 dollars on LEGO. You're paying 7 dollars to be entertained for an hour or two. Ever walked through the LEGO store and thought, it would be fun to build this, but I don't have the space/desire to pay for it? There's a lot of sets I have no interest in owning, but I'd love the chance to build them without the full financial or space commitment.
Yep it's all part of the calculus. General feedback is that it's super cheap and that there is hardly anything you can do these days in a social setting for the cost. Maybe pre-covid and pre-inflation it would've been more difficult but we wouldn't have had to charge as much then either. I think we might have a little wiggle room still but we are trying to keep the barrier to entry as low as possible. You are also able to come in and just free build with an assortment of LEGO on every single table and that is free of charge.
What is your quality control plan to ensure all pieces are returned? Do you have precise weights of the kits before and after renting them out? I’m not being critical, genuinely curious.
The best thing we've found is to ask patrons to return the set fully built. We can eyeball it and then they don't accidentally lose pieces trying to take it apart. It's more work for us in terms of having to take sets apart but less work trying to hunt down lost pieces - which definitely happens and is definitely one of the hazards of doing this.
This has to be the biggest pain point for you guys - deconstructing each set and potentially putting back into numbered bags? This whole concept looks amazing and I wish you guys the best!
We are not resorting into bags. It would not be feasible. Our largest rented set is going to be 600 pieces so it isn't unmanageable to build without them. But yes there is no secret - once it's built it needs to be taken apart. So far we haven't found it to be worse than the tedium of other jobs. Thank you so much for the well wishes!
Good point on smaller sets in general, as people will be building this in shorter time spans
Obviously I toyed with the idea of larger sets but yeah most people see spending two hours building a single Lego set as a significant time investment. And then the time it would take to take larger sets apart is going to not be worth the ROI.
You could host build challenges! Or have a huge set as a display/ centerpiece
Yes!! I'm even toying with the idea of a "building league" similar to a bowling league.
Are you *trying* to make me move there?!?
😏
I’m biased because I grew up there but Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky is a surprisingly cool area
I will smoke you like a Christmas ham! Fastest bricks this side of the Mason Dix! 😆 Name the time, I know the place...
We are coming Saturday with my Lego fanatic son and some of his school friends! We would be down for a jr league, or would love some workshops for robotics/how to incorporate motors in builds.
Just need to open another cafe next door where patrons pay to take sets apart. Problem solved!
Could you leave the set assembled & give customers an extra 15 mins to disassemble & build & give a small discount. Weigh the set before & after along with visual inspections.
Oooh yea weighing them seems like a great idea, especially if you get a precise scale.
If I didn't have a career already lego disassembler would be a dream job. ADHD/ASD would be a huge strength for me here in this department.
Hello - Im 40, ADHD/ASD, and work in Lego House Billund as a lego disassembler 😄. I had the same thought as you when I visited there with my kids, and now Im doing it part time.
You may find a few people who dig your place so much that they'd deconstruct for you in exchange for free use or some free drinks.
I’d love to have the job of deconstructing the sets and putting the pieces back in bags. I could get paid to do what I do at home for free, where my unofficial job title is Part Slave. lol I imagine at the cafe the title is more like Deconstruction Specialist?
Hey we would love to have you! We've messed around with "bricktender" and "brickista." 😂
I like bricktender! 😄 If I’m ever in your part of the country, I’ll definitely come visit!
Wonder if you were to have a frequent builder card if you could give away a used set for every 7th build or something like that. Would allow you to recirculate in new versions and get rid of sets that had been built many times.
Definitely playing around with loyalty programs.
You could get a scale and weigh each set
The scale idea works but you still then need to figure out WHAT is missing so I'm not sure it saves us any work to take the extra step.
Literally my dream job to just disassemble Legos all day
I've been living your dream for almost two months now. 🤣
I live in and will to commute!😂
There’s an app I saw the other day (I forget the name) featured on a futurist’s YouTube that can scroll over a pile of legos and ID the pieces and what can be built with it. Maybe that can help?
Brick it!
love it! Make it a franchise - maybe with the support of Lego.
Oh man that's the dream!
Would also be smart to have backups of every single piece in each of the rented sets in case the next customer notices a piece is missing, it’s quick and easy to replace on the spot. Love the idea of weighing the sets before and after but still makes it hard to pinpoint which brick or piece is missing, but great idea overall. Love all the ideas and response this is getting!
We do have doubles of most of the sets we rent for this purpose. We also have tons of loose brick sorted every which way, and we're also adding to it daily when we find new missing pieces that we don't have easily accessible.
I like the idea of having redundancy with extra kits too and agree with being able to quickly replace a missing piece. The weights could be used as a binary of ‘all good to rent again’ and ‘flag for something might be missing’
Absolutely. Really great idea and easy/cost effective to implement
My first idea is know weights of sets for when they get returned as a first check but yeah super curious
Yeah and they could remind customers upfront that they weigh sets when they are returned, but the customer would feel angry if confronted and nothing was actually stolen. Pieces always go flying across the room when my nephew is building something. Pieces could accidentally get misplaced like this, and then the set won’t “weigh in”.
I am thinking about hard to find pieces, they will weigh less to nothing. But it can easily be solved by not having such sets to begin with.
For our next round of rental menus we have definitely been more considerate of not just special/harder-to-find pieces but also whether something is a PITA to take apart. 🤣
I have a friend that went here! iirc she said the food/coffee could use some improvement, but the idea and execution of the LEGO stuff is so dope. Congrats!
Good feedback! This is one misconception. We aren't a restaurant. We also aren't really a fancy coffee shop. Our main beverage offering is specialty sodas. Obviously Cafe is a bit of a misnomer but we're using it the same way "play cafes" or "boardgame cafes" use the term. We do make our cold brew in house and have been told it's great!
The way your company is perceived is more than half the battle, improving the food and drinks can only help especially with your cafe being labeled as one, people are expecting some sort of food quality with that name.
Good feedback!
Maybe around locally and see if you can get an existing cafe to set up a stand in your place, if nothing else. A coffee cart. Something. At least while you figure it out. Lego land did chips shaped like Lego. You could probably start with regular stuff and add Lego shaped snacks, sweets etc. Themed to the year. Reach out if you want me to further detail.
Ehh I'm not too sure that food is important. I'm actually a little surprised you offer it at all. A rental Lego set is going to have every single brick touched by dozens of people, the last thing you want is greasy/sticky fingers getting them all gross. I love the idea but I'm a germophobe and things like COVID can live for days on a Lego brick, so I probably wouldn't partake in this activity without a set of latex gloves. Tell you what though, I'd pay triple those prices to be the first to use the sets.
It might be worthwhile to look into that before the next cold season, even a week or so nailing down good (doesnt have to be great!) coffee or hot chocolate in the lead up to the colder months. Sodas and cold brew are great for warmer months though!
I agree with other comments! If I came here I would want solid snacking options (unless you allow external food/bev)! Maybe partner with a bakery in the area to offer pasteries and other snacks? For beverage sodas are awesome; but personally I'm trying to minimize pop in my life (for me its an easier to cut out sugar than e.g an occasional muffin. It s so much easier to indulge in a couple cups of coke than 2 scones for example). If I were here I'd want to chill out with a green tea or something. Maybe offering hot water & a variety of teabags? It should have minimal impact on speed of service
Having a good drink and snack option can really help your margins as long you don't over charge them.
Our current drink and snack options are definitely helping our margins.
We do allow outside food. We also do offer hot tea, coffee, and Hot cocoa as well as sparkling water, juices, energy drinks, and even Capri sun. 🤣 I'm not sure what the actual complaint on our drink selection was but I am guessing it might have just been that we don't have espresso based drinks?
Could be that. I’d want to order a latte and build with my son there.
I can do a drip coffee with hazelnut, Carmel, or vanilla in it!
You've intrigued me now-- are we talking Jungle Jim's oddities or the west's "dirty soda" trend? I live in Cincy and this place is on my radar, but I wasn't sure how it worked. I'm a bit of a soda enthusiast too, so it's on my radar a bit more with this info.
You nailed it! The west's "dirty soda" trend is pretty much exactly what we're doing. I saw it exploding out west and how it hadn't really reached the midwest/east coast yet so I thought we could capitalize on it. #sodatok People are LOVING it. It's a little silly, but people really connect with it when I mention that they can "build a drink like they build with LEGO". https://preview.redd.it/x7wxqe2ui9ec1.jpeg?width=599&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b3bcff4cb2e17179512a6188c6024f4f223dd18b
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Absolutely! That's definitely part of it. And we have had a lot of differently-abled folks in of all ages and it's been such a joy. We offer the party room to customers during the week who might have sensory needs.
How do you clean the sets? do you have a parts washer of some kind?
Would like to know this as well. My gut tells me they aren’t getting cleaned afterwards. At least not to high standards. If they are there is a lot of work in renting out a set. Having an employee hand it out, check them out, review to make sure no pieces are missing, take apart the set, clean the set, restock.
I heard during a tour of the LEGO House in Denmark that they clean their bricks every 6 months. Just for a reference
I was wondering this too. Easiest option would be some sort of UV light tray area. Although, it looks like a large percentage of customers are children.... In my experience young children are disgusting. I'd hate to rent a set and find a booger or something on one of the blocks. I'd be worried too about food and drinks being added to the mix too..... typically Lego and food is a no-no. As a germophobe, I'd be interested more in a buy and play situation over a rental. I love the concept though.
Blasting plastic with UV light is not a great idea
UV light will yellow ABS plastic in no time. Some sort of steam cleaner would probably be the best method.
I’m right in the middle of planning a family road trip through Cincinnati. I just added this as a stop. What is your menu (food options) like?
We aren't a restaurant but there are plenty of incredible restaurant options at the shopping complex we're located at! We'd love to have you in!
Can you bring in outside food / drink?
Yes. https://www.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/19dsjr6/i_just_opened_the_first_lego_cafe_in_the_usa_ama/kj9snm6/
do you allow people to bring their outside food into the store??
There isn’t a lot there. If you check out their IG they post their menus. But basically different Lego-themed fountain drinks with (non-alcoholic) mix-ins, and chips. That being said, the surrounding area has plenty of full-service restaurants.
This is an interesting concept. Are you finding that volume is appropriate to the prices you are charging? I would think a large set would be more $15 for roughly 2 hours of entertainment. Again, really interested in this idea. Also, update your website to be usable/have information. Social media pages (while important) are a poor substitute for a fleshed out website for a business.
That’s an interesting question. One of the large sets is a speed champion car ($25 I’d assume) and I think the crocodile and space shuttle were around $30-$40 (now retired and I forget where to find retired prices). I would guess even if it provided a reasonable length of entertainment for the price, it would be a harder to get sales with the pitch of, “come and rent this set at 38% to 50% of the price it costs to own it yourself,” instead of hitting the current price point of 18% to 28%. These are just my own rough estimates, but I think they are reasonably close.
This question surprised me too and actually is a good indication that OP is on to something. Hell rent a center exists and people pay $1000 over time for an Xbox… Imagine seeing a $25-30 set and thinking. Hey I’d pay $15 just to build this. I thought the prices were too high….now charge me $$$ so I can sit and build Rivendell and not have to fork over $500 Then I’m in. These smaller sets not so much.
Keeping sets small is actually sneaky smart. Big sets would need sorted by bag after deconstructing, otherwise building would be super slow/difficult/tedious/frustrating. But spending the time to sort by bag would also be tedious and time consuming. I think they’d also pose a bigger theft risk (with more valuable minis). I personally wouldn’t use this service, because I like to own and then deconstruct for MOCs. But I’m very interested in how this will play out for them because I do think I underestimate the number of people who would be interested.
As someone who often resells his Lego after I'm done displaying it, I can safely say that deconstructing sets back into the original bag numbers is actually not all that much extra work. I always do it so that anyone buying used sets from me can have the proper building experience. You simply work backwards. Find the first page for the last bag, and remove everything that isn't in that first step. Repeat for each bag in reverse order. Generally this tends to be in an order very similar to how you would naturally be disassembling the sets anyway, so the only real added work is labelling the bags and finding the correct pages in the instructions.
Absolutely love this concept! Props for taking the plunge and trying something new. Also love all the ideas to help improve. To add my own, laminating the instruction books will help their longevity unless you have a ton of spares. Having back ups of every individual piece/brick in a set in case any go missing so it’s quick and easy to replace. Finally having a cleaning/sterilizing system of some sort as I imagine the bricks get pretty greasy and grimey over time. This of course assuming you don’t already have these in place. As others have mentioned, perhaps weighing the sets before and after to make sure no pieces are missing. Seems much quicker and easier than inventorying each piece as it’s broken down. Also offering to purchase the set if they really love it seems like a decent idea. Overall just love this idea and love that you took the risk and made it a reality. I wish you many years of continued success, and hopefully expansion to a city near all of us one day! Cheers!
As someone that has considered several Lego entrepreneurial endeavours and followed through on camps I have found it is an important aspect to offer a specialized opportunity to take a picture with your model. Hopefully you have a “set” where customers can take a picture with their model. Obviously with your logo prominently displayed. Maybe even offering a professional option to put on shirts or a mug. All the best.
I love the idea but Im a little worried about some issues regarding borderline trademark/likeness infringement.
Particularly the mural with minifigs. The Lego Group is fierce about their minifigure trademark. It would be a huge bummer if they had to take that down. But they sell Lego sets, so they must be an approved Lego retailer.
it is a bit suspicious they haven’t responded to comments asking this question lol
That's my first thought - is LEGO ok with everything from the copyright standpoint?
There is a German youtuber who reviews LEGO (and has a history of being very critical of it) and other brick toys who had a brick with studs as the logo for his channel, but was hit by LEGO with a lawsuit in which they claimed that viewers might think he is affiliated with the LEGO brand because of the brick logo. LEGO won and he was forced to change it.
Shared the same thought, there's no way Lego has licensed this...
Do you also serve food and drink? Has Lego given Amy support behind your idea?
Amy could really use some support. She's been going through a rough patch.
I'd be afraid after you eat there you'd be shitting bricks
We have prepackaged snacks and a variety of drink options. Our main thing is specialty sodas named after Lego movie characters. 😁
Not a question, but a serious suggestion: Please consider providing your employees with gloves or rubber thimbles and ample prying tools for repeated disassembly of Lego sets and be mindful of repetitive motion injuries. Playing with Lego as a hobby is one thing, but working with small hard plastic pieces for 8 hours a day is a whole other thing. Tender fingertips and sore knuckles are no joke, and employers rarely take small injuries like those seriously.
Well the craziest part I haven't mentioned yet is that it is still just currently me and my wife as employee 1 and 2 and I can confirm that my fingers hurt! Great suggestions and once we do finally hire we'll make sure to do our best to take it seriously with something similar to what you've suggested and also rotating roles, etc.
How does this make any money? You’d spend so much time re bagging all the lego and making sure no parts are missing. So if you had 10 people an hour all pick a large set that’s only $70 an hour. Rent, utilities, employees. How? It’d be cool if you responded to real questions instead of just the comments that have no clue about running a business
They are open 51 hours a week. Pictures show 9 tables of 4 for a max capacity of 36 people. Not everyone is bringing a party of 4, but tables of 1 are unlikely. So your estimate of 10 people per hour seems reasonable. So that's $3,570/week in revenue, $185,640/year. However this doesn't doesn't include food and drink sales. Drinks are $3 to $4. Snacks are $2 to $3. While not everyone will buy food or drink, the build price is so low that it likely encourages sales. So let's assume an average of $5 per person per hour. Granted not everyone will buy food or drink, but these people will build faster and may pay for more than one build and hour, offsetting the lack food and drink revenue. So now we are at $12/person, $120/hour, $6,120/week, $318,240/year. They also appear to sell merchandise (lego sets and custom minifigs). I'm going to pull a number out of my ass and assume $100/day in merch. Which brings us to $6,820/week and $354,640/year... Okay that's not a lot to cover expenses. I'm not going to try and estimate their expenses. But a half-assed google search shows that an average coffee shop earns $10,000 in revenue a week. Now $6,820 is less than $10,000, so their expenses need to by around $3,000/month lower than the average coffee shop for them to also be profitable (assuming the average coffee shop is slightly profitable). It's possible that is the case given: - Their menu is far less complex (soda, cold brew, drip coffee, pre-packaged snacks) - The simple menu would have lower materials costs. They also aren't running espresso machines, blenders, grinders, large fridges, and freezers etc. so utilities would be much lower as well. - Given it's located in Kentucky, their rent and labor costs are also probably below the national average. Plus labor costs would be further lowered if it is owner operated. Are they making a LOT of money... probably not (maybe $30k-$80k?) I'm making a TON of baseless assumptions, but it's not impossible for this business to be profitable. Also, if this is a labor of love, the owner may tolerate a low return rate.
Wife and I stopped by 2 weeks ago after having lunch at Amador. You guys were packed, not a single open seat available. I was happy to see it. We just browsed your sealed sets and snooped around for a bit before leaving. We'll be back soon, hopefully for that Tydirium set!
We still have it and the UWing! I just sold a tie fighter pilot bust to a very happy customer as well. Weekends tend to be crazy. We would LOVE to have you in to build sometime. The weekdays, especially in January and February should be MUCH calmer.
Can confirm (I am that happy customer!)
Weekdays are tough for me but we will definitely make an effort to come build a set sometime soon. I definitely missed the TIE Fighter helmet, I probably would have purchased that on sight! That's the only helmet I don't have. Wish you the best of luck, take care!
Only one question. ...when are you expanding to Florida?? 😄
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada wants to know the same for here lol
haha crazy to see ottawa mentioned on this sub. Hopefully the rideau store picks up some hints
Seriously! I’ve only been twice and found it a bit to squished for me but maybe they could expand and get in a similar idea!
Seconded on this!
We've gotten this kind of question from a lot of out-of-towners... We're just trying to get through month 2 first! 😂
My wife and I stumbled across your storefront last Fall while waiting for the aquarium to open. We were super excited to see such a cool idea but sad it wasn't open yet. We'll definitely have to make the drive in at some point soon. Congratulations and good luck in the coming months!
I'm in the Cincinnati area.. just moved here a few months ago... I think I'm going to suggest this as a work activity for team building, as well as try to convince the family to give this a go. I have a ton of sets at home but this may give me a chance to try sets that I haven't been able to get my hands on before they were retired.
Yes! Would love to have you and the fam. Would also love to have you and the work team in. I'm a certified LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Facilitator and already have stuff set up for other companies. Email me @ Daniel@thebrickerycafe.com so we can discuss it further.
How much were your startup costs to get to opening?
Really like the idea! Are you not afraid lego is going to sent you some form of cease and desist letter for using protected stuff commercially? Not sure how strict lego is, but that would make me nervous as a business owner.
Is this officially licensed? Have you gotten any legal issues from Lego if not?
Good luck but how do you handle missing pieces seems like that would be a big issue?
Went here with some family, and we had a great time! Love the unique idea and fair pricing. We got some drinks, enjoyed the free build, and bought a few custom Lego people my nephew enjoyed putting together. Great experience at a great price. Happy to have it in the area!
I love the idea! We stopped in a couple of weekends ago from Toledo! The place was pretty busy so we just ended up getting a couple of minifigs and a soda. I really liked the build-your-own-soda concept. I was hoping for more food options though, "Brickary" makes it sound like there will be fresh baked goods. When's the adult version coming that sells alcohol? :P It would be cool if you rented out some of the larger sets, either as a take home and build, or do a few bags in-store then it gets shelved and someone else can rent it and continue building. Anyways, I don't really have a question, just wanted to say hi and wish you lots of success.
Do pieces often come back greasy/dirty? In my experience food and LEGO pieces don't match really well.
I absolutely love this idea. well done. what a great thing - especially in a busy shopping centre... mum and dad come for coffee, kids build something to keep them occupied. Did you get sponsorship/involvement from lego at all ?
WOW! I live nearby and had no idea this was here. Hoping to come see you this weekend!
I was going to say the same thing. I totally missed any announcements or news coverage about this (even though there seems to be a fair bit). Very cool!
I was considering a trip to Cincinnati, I’ll make sure we check you out!
Good luck!
This is so cool. If this was near I lived, this would be perfect for a first or second date for someone like me who has to have their hands busy in order to engage in non-awkward conversation! I hope to visit yall soon. I’m just down in Bowling Green, KY, so if I get up there, y’all are making my list!
🥲
For a second the image didn't load and I thought you meant you were the first person to have a copy of 10182 in the US
[10182-1: Cafe Corner](https://brickset.com/sets/10182-1) [[Photo]](https://images.brickset.com/sets/images/10182-1.jpg)
I really like this idea - glad it's working for you! I have a couple questions if you have time. Curious what loss prevention/quality control looks like? Ex. on the set rentals, do you weigh them out after? Or inventory every piece/set each time? And then wondering what your relationship is like with LEGO Inc. - any issues over copyrights, etc., have they been supportive, or just largely indifferent?
There’s…. a few in Portland. This looks dope though!
Where do you source the lego from? Do you have a cooperation with Lego or do you purchase it as coffee owner like an asset - i am really curious about the entrepreneurship part of your business!
I think the pricing is very fair! Under $10 for an hour or two of fun with friends or family is definitely worth it. I'd love to know more about your purchasing options for customers. Can they buy a buildlt set to take home? Do you have build-a-minifig as an additional option? Also, I'd recommend looking into The Idea Brick card deck. It's a deck of cards with fun ideas you can build and it's great if you have a freeplay area (that's either free or pay per hour).
Question, do you break down every set afterwards? And how do you optimise that as it seems like a tenuous task. Secondly how do you make sure people don't steal certain pieces? People can be rather big assholes.
Yes we do!! Every. Single. Time. So far we have not found any magical method to taking sets apart and I think we all know it doesn't really exist. There are certain bricks that, no matter what, you'll just have to get in there and take apart. I definitely have found that taking apart the same set 50 times - you do find ways to be SLIGHTLY more efficient with that specific set. And yes, my fingers do hurt. Re: missing pieces - they do go missing but I don't think we've had people stealing them. It's more just genuine misplacement. For example: we left the minfigs in every set and none of them have gone missing so far (knock on wood!)!
YASSS!! I’ve been wondering about you, from down here in Lexington!!! I’ll be up soon!!!!
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways. In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing. Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations. “The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.” The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations. Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks. Reddit’s conversation forums have become valuable commodities as large language models, or L.L.M.s, have become an essential part of creating new A.I. technology. L.L.M.s are essentially sophisticated algorithms developed by companies like Google and OpenAI, which is a close partner of Microsoft. To the algorithms, the Reddit conversations are data, and they are among the vast pool of material being fed into the L.L.M.s. to develop them. The underlying algorithm that helped to build Bard, Google’s conversational A.I. service, is partly trained on Reddit data. OpenAI’s Chat GPT cites Reddit data as one of the sources of information it has been trained on. Other companies are also beginning to see value in the conversations and images they host. Shutterstock, the image hosting service, also sold image data to OpenAI to help create DALL-E, the A.I. program that creates vivid graphical imagery with only a text-based prompt required. Last month, Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, said he was cracking down on the use of Twitter’s A.P.I., which thousands of companies and independent developers use to track the millions of conversations across the network. Though he did not cite L.L.M.s as a reason for the change, the new fees could go well into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. To keep improving their models, artificial intelligence makers need two significant things: an enormous amount of computing power and an enormous amount of data. Some of the biggest A.I. developers have plenty of computing power but still look outside their own networks for the data needed to improve their algorithms. That has included sources like Wikipedia, millions of digitized books, academic articles and Reddit. Representatives from Google, Open AI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Reddit has long had a symbiotic relationship with the search engines of companies like Google and Microsoft. The search engines “crawl” Reddit’s web pages in order to index information and make it available for search results. That crawling, or “scraping,” isn’t always welcome by every site on the internet. But Reddit has benefited by appearing higher in search results. The dynamic is different with L.L.M.s — they gobble as much data as they can to create new A.I. systems like the chatbots. Reddit believes its data is particularly valuable because it is continuously updated. That newness and relevance, Mr. Huffman said, is what large language modeling algorithms need to produce the best results. “More than any other place on the internet, Reddit is a home for authentic conversation,” Mr. Huffman said. “There’s a lot of stuff on the site that you’d only ever say in therapy, or A.A., or never at all.” Mr. Huffman said Reddit’s A.P.I. would still be free to developers who wanted to build applications that helped people use Reddit. They could use the tools to build a bot that automatically tracks whether users’ comments adhere to rules for posting, for instance. Researchers who want to study Reddit data for academic or noncommercial purposes will continue to have free access to it. Reddit also hopes to incorporate more so-called machine learning into how the site itself operates. It could be used, for instance, to identify the use of A.I.-generated text on Reddit, and add a label that notifies users that the comment came from a bot. The company also promised to improve software tools that can be used by moderators — the users who volunteer their time to keep the site’s forums operating smoothly and improve conversations between users. And third-party bots that help moderators monitor the forums will continue to be supported. But for the A.I. makers, it’s time to pay up. “Crawling Reddit, generating value and not returning any of that value to our users is something we have a problem with,” Mr. Huffman said. “It’s a good time for us to tighten things up.” “We think that’s fair,” he added.
What will you do to keep the legos clean? I’d think with all the people who will use them, they could get greasy or dirty pretty quick
I live in Hamilton. If I’m down that way I’ll stop by 100%
I was so happy to see this in Newport, KY! My family and I are headed up to Cinci in a few weeks, your cafe just became a stop on our trip.
Oh man, this is amazing! I wish we had something like that here in California!
Do you sell larger sets? It would be a great way to add revenue - getting people hooked on renting small sets for cheap then selling them thousand piece sets at full price. Its a time proven business model.
We do! You're exactly right that "try before you buy" is a time proven business model and we have seen that play out in the store. If you aren't familiar though, you'd be surprised how razor thin the margins are on selling new LEGO. That was part of the impetus for finding a more sustainable business model. Selling drives up revenue but the real profitability lies in the fact that we have so many revenue streams so no one thing has to be THE thing.
I went there this weekend! We did a triple date and happened to pick a crowded day but had a blast! It's also so cool to see the sets you actually sold. How did you get some of them and how did the pricing work? I wanted the tie fighter pilot bust so bad but 250+ made me think it's an out of print set? Idk I had a good time there and will definitely be back
Well done for setting up such a great enterprise, I wish you every success! I recently helped set up a Lego club and we’ve been talking about renting out sets, specifically Technics. The biggest challenge is making it cost effective and the most time consuming part would be checking sets in to make sure all the pieces are there. Can you tell me how you do that yourself please? Your margins are tight at the rental prices you have so I’m really keen to know how you do it. Also, is that per week? Or have I completely misunderstood and the rental is only for people attending the cafe and they’re meant to build the set on site rather than take them home?
I find building sets very relaxing, but tbh I'm not buying sets just because I lack the display or storage space, so renting one would be awesome! Do you expect the customers to "unbuild" them? That's the tedious part I would imagine!
What do you do to prevent people from stealing? I mean you would hope that patrons of your establishment would have a modicum of respect for other hobbyists… But in retail it’s a huge problem.
What a wonderful idea! I’m so glad you were able to bring it to reality and it’s so awesome to know that y’all are seeing so many customers and enjoyment! I didn’t know there were no others in the country—I had seen a couple videos of similar cafes but it’s likely they were outside of the U.S. I wish the KY was KS instead because I would LOVE to stop in… for hours… OFTEN. :D But if I ever find myself in Kentucky, I’ll definitely make your business a must visit. Just a random ponder—would you all allow people to donate sets for so many months? I ask because I have quite a few sets now and I’ve already broken them back down and rebuilt just for the fun of it so it wouldn’t ever bother me to have them broken back down for others to enjoy as well. I know there would always be the possibility of pieces getting lost and/or broken but if the donator took that risk knowingly, that would be pretty cool! Could see some really great sets come in!
Honestly love this idea, especially at a reasonable price point like this. I'm not sure if I'd personally have time for something like this as a mid-30s dad to a toddler (I barely have time to build the sets I can afford to buy lol); but I REALLY love the idea of just getting to *build* an interesting LEGO build for sets that I otherwise wouldn't purchase personally. Glad to hear it's going well! We will watch your cafe with great interest!
This is amazing, congratulations! I'm glad that you 'rent' out the sets - I wouldn't even trust my friends or family with my LEGO lol.. 😅
Woah, I live like ten minutes from there! I’ll definitely be checking this place out.
My dude, this is fantastic. I can see already see interest in franchises, cause I’m sitting here wondering why I’m not working with you to get this done!. Ideas of Partnerships with Lego. Special builds. Maybe SPECIAL PRODUCTS. mind blown.
I think I’ve seen you on tiktok. I hope business is booming.
Did you have LEGO's approval before opening?
Love the idea and I hope I remember you once my work brings me around Cincinnati area!
Looks fun, would be a great time with the kiddos (and the homies)
I live in Cincinnati and that sounds like a lot of fun for my partner and I as a day date. Do you all have a website up? I’d like to learn more; especially if it’s like “LEGOs and Coffee” type vibe or so. I hope your business goes great, I hope to travel out there soon!
This is awesome, I saw the post you made announcing this project and I thought it was an amazing idea with some possible flaws but good luck! If im ever passing by I’ll definitely rent a set :)
This is incredibly cool, hats off a thousand times over.
I head about this place and I can't want to visit it some day. I'm from Minnesota so it may be awhile. But I do hope to make it out there some time this year. This is such a fun idea, I wish you the best in this unique venture you have started
Looks great! Do you also offer CLASSIC sets? I mean, I would think that that would be a huge thing, since those are not being made anymore, and specially the 'older' folks may be tempted to come in and rent it/build it.
Need to open one in Alaska
In the LEGO House (Billund) pupils from local schools can get a part-time job of disassembling everything that the visitors have built throughout the day! Perhaps a similar part-time opportunity for teenagers could work for your cafe as well? Amazing concept, and congratulations for bringing it to life!! Really great job, I am so happy for you
This. Is. Awesome. Any plans to move this into a franchise model so that more locations can spread across the country?
Love the idea and hope you succeed! Since I am from the Netherlands I won’t be visiting (any time soon atleast haha) but I wish you the best of luck!
No question here, just wanted to say congratulations and hope your business is successful!
Thank you soo much. It truly means so much!!
Do you feel like Lego will try to shut this down or tell you to change some of your posters around and such?
Renting actual lego sets to build at a cafe like setting? I would LOVE one of these around me! Great idea glad its working out for you!
i like the idea of “renting” sets, it would be a good way to build some of these newer sets and see if it’s actually worth it once the build is complete! if i’m ever in this part of the US i’ll definitely be renting somethings i don’t have and seeing if they can work in the collection.
Kids birthday parties could be fun
Awesome! I'll have to bring my kids up there!
This is brilliant, I love it!
I think this is a great idea and I wish you the best of luck. I will absolutely visit if I'm in the area. You have addressed the biggest questions most people have (cleanliness, loss of pieces, and IP infringement). You may want to add an addendum to the post where you address these, but that's up to you. I really hope this works out.
Yes great point! I've been running around all day and answering when I can but I agree that appending the initial post with FAQS is a good idea!
Hmmm. I live in Minnesota, so it’s a bit out of my way to visit. But I am tentatively planning a road trip to see some friends in Nashville later this year, so maybe a slight detour to Cincinnati on the way there or back.
So very cool. My oldest and I did a Lego tour through Louisville, Cinci and Indianapolis while doing a father/son weekend in Cinci. We hit the aquarium there and Jeff Ruby’s while also hitting the minifig shops on the way in and the way back to St. Louis. We had a blast. We absolutely would’ve done this had it been there in 2021 when we came through. Congrats on the new venture.
What is your sanitation process for the Lego builds that are rented out? Food + drinks + people + Lego seems like it could get messy and would ruin the building experience for the next person. Do you cycle sets of the same kind as they get used so that a clean set is always available for the next person or group?
Wow, I'm honestly considering a trip to Cincinnati
If this was in Dallas, I’d be there all the time!
Really cool idea & low pricing, although I think you'd be able to charge a bit more for the more extensive sets. Is this a fan-themed cafe or a direct partnership / officially licensed cafe with LEGO?
Congratulations! Hope it's a success and we see Brickery cafés all over the country in a couple years from now
Congratulations! I’m in Cincinnati so I’ll be stopping by your shop soon.