Our Vision

To be a market leading board games cafe with a global reach rooted on educational grounds

Our Mission

To provide our customers high quality and best value services through the continual pursue of innovation and service excellence

The Origin

Owner Yappy got acquainted with board games through his group of teacher friends, in particular, CY and Alex. Being a great fan of the game RISK since young, he found himself falling in love with other board games quickly and passionately. Little did he expect board games to be so varied and interesting in terms of themes, game play, designs and levels of engagement. Board games are not just limited to the classics like Monopoly, CLUEDO, RISK and Scrabble etc, in fact, there are hundreds (or perhaps thousands) types of board games and card games available in the market. Until today, he still has very fond memories of the first game introduced by CY – Citadels.

For the months that followed, many board gaming sessions were organised by Alex at his place where they called AJ (Alex's Joint). Group size varied from three to a dozen and they usually gathered during school holidays as most of the players are teachers. At the beginning of this year, by sheer chance, he was assigned to conduct an Elective Programme (EP) by his Year Director in Anglo-Chinese School (Independent) for the lower secondary boys. Being a board games fanatic by then, he proposed to offer board games as an elective and was accepted. After half a year of running the programme, a thought struck him – How about a board games cafe in school?

In May 2007, a board game cafe called De Coder's Cafe was set up in ACS (Independent) as an interest group with the approval of the school management and the help of Uncle Anthony. It was run by a group of board games enthuses comprising mainly boys from Class 2.4 (2006 & 2007) after school hours. The cafe was not really considered of resounding success due to its small scale of operation but it definitely provided many hours of interaction, fun and laughter for those who were there. More importantly, it set the stage for the birth of De Coder's Cafe at Balmoral Plaza. A new chapter will begin from this point. How will the story continue??