Thirsty Dice and Twenty One Pips, two game cafes, are shutting down

Matt Hendricks rolled the dice by opening two game cafes, and now, facing slumping sales, says he has lost.

Thirsty Dice in the Fairmount area, which was Philadelphia’s first such game cafe at its 2018 opening, and its newer, larger offshoot, Twenty One Pips in Ardmore, which he opened in 2022, will shut down on Sunday.

Hendricks pointed broadly to economic forces, namely, a lack of “the discretionary income [for people] to be able to go out and do some of this stuff. This has been months of trying to find a way to make this work,” he said. “This summer was really tough. Usually, we find a way through the [slower] summer and when it gets cold, people will come back. We just never had the rebound we had from the summer in the previous years.”

Both locations offer a nostalgic, lower-tech experience. Besides a bar and restaurant, their walls are stocked with hundreds of games — classics such as Guess Who, Aggravation, or Battleship, as well as more esoteric pursuits such as Tichu, Azul, and Carcassone. Employees called “gametenders” go over the rules. About 30 people work at both locations.

Hendricks was a management consultant who, with his wife, Lynn, were visiting Toronto and stopped into North America’s first board-game cafe, Snakes & Lattes. He thought such an idea would be a great fit in Philadelphia, and he signed Thirsty Dice’s lease at 17th Street and Fairmount Avenue. Twenty One Pips, named after the number of black dots on dice, is on two levels with 170 seats.

Hendricks said he was not ready to discuss what would become of the games. “As you might imagine, a lot of people have reached out,” he said. “We’re really just focusing on our staff and our guests.”