Good games, cold cider, real company.
Cardboard & Cider
About

The Story Behind Cardboard & Cider

Good games, cold cider, real company.

01

The Story Behind Cardboard & Cider

Martin Tetlow opened Cardboard & Cider in March 2019 in a narrow storefront on Wyndham Street in downtown Guelph, with forty-two games on a single shelving unit and a secondhand espresso machine he'd bought from a closing cafe in…

04

02

The first year was a learning curve. The original menu was too ambitious, the seating layout was wrong, and the first batch of house-made soft pretzels came out so dense they were quietly retired after two weeks. By the end of 2019 the…

Est. 2019

Milestones

2019
Established
Now
Cardboard & Cider is Guelph's board game cafe: 600+ games, Ontario ciders on tap, and a warm room on Wyndham Street. Reserve a table or walk in.
Founder
Martin Tetlow
Founder

Martin Tetlow spent a decade managing the games floor at a hobby shop in Guelph before deciding, in the autumn of 2018, that what the city actually needed was somewhere you could play a four-hour game and order a decent drink at the same time. He trained as a barista in his twenties, ran a short-lived pop-up supper club for two years, and has an embarrassingly large personal collection of worker-placement games. He opened Cardboard & Cider in March 2019 with forty-two titles on the shelf and a rotating tap of six Ontario ciders. He still teaches new players every Saturday afternoon and is rarely seen without a sleeve of card protectors in his shirt pocket.

Reviewed by clientsHand-finishedIndependent business