Derek Brinkley talks about the success of café bridge events in Suffolk:
Post the lock-down era, social duplicate bridge in my County of Suffolk appears to have become increasingly popular, with several sessions at different clubs each week typically having 15 tables on a regular basis.
This led me to seek approval from our Suffolk Bridge Association to explore running a Café Bridge event. We held an inaugural event in Bury St Edmunds town centre in 2024 with 34 pairs registering to play. A year on and we have just run our second event and this time we had more than double the numbers at 72 pairs.
So, what is Café Bridge? How do you go about organising such an event and how does this help promote the game to get more people playing both socially and competitively in local bridge clubs?
What is Café Bridge?
Café Bridge is simply a normal game of duplicate bridge, but instead of just moving tables after each round, all players move between different Cafés/Restaurants for the next round, which then repeats itself across the day and includes a lunch break at the venue you are seated at for the round which proceeds lunch. What’s the fun in doing that I hear you ask. Well try it and find out! The accolades after these events pour in with players wanting to know when the next Café Bridge event will be, using adjectives such as fabulous, stupendous, thoroughly enjoyable, super, wonderful, fantastic, brilliant, excellent, amazing, splendid…. I think you get the picture by now!
Although some independent Café Bridge events are run with the purpose of raising funds for a local charity, a County Café Bridge event will ordinarily be about running a bridge event first but then identifying a local charity to support as part of the day. It’s always a good idea to do this since it will attract more players and give you greater opportunities for local media coverage to promote bridge in your county.
How to organise a Café Bridge event from a ‘County Bridge’ perspective
There are lots of tips and tricks to organising and running these events and no matter how well they are organised, almost certainly there will be a few hiccups both before and during the event; but nothing beyond the capabilities of anyone with reasonable organisational skills. Firstly, a hat-tip to Michael Brown who organises many of these events in the home counties and has been a source of great advice.
You may also find this checklist of activities helpful with what you will need to consider.