We recently connected with Adam Valentine and Nick Hammett and have shared our conversation below.

Adam Valentine and Nick Hammett, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

We both had a long conversation one day about how we hate working for other people and we would love to go into business for ourselves. We both have a passion for gaming, including board games, D&D, and card games. We wanted to open a place where our family, friends, and our community could come and join us for a great time doing what we love. We knew that to do this we needed an anchor (a draw for people), so we decided to use food and coffee as that. The theme came pretty naturally as we both like Norse Mythology and seeing as Valhalla was close to a combination of our last names, it just seemed to fit!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

As we said, we have always had a passion for games. We wanted to create a one-stop-shop for food, beverage, 3D printing, gaming, and community. We wanted the food to be not only tasteful, but affordable and on theme. Beverages offered would be along the lines of Coffee, Tea, Mead, Beer, and Wine. We will have our friends at 4 Horsemen Printing operating in house to provide top of the line 3D printing to our guests. We will have a large library of games to rent for people to play while they enjoy their meals. All of this as well as corporate and personal events will be offered here at Valhalla.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

We started our journey as an event business in January 2020. We all know what followed shortly after. After surviving as a business with no overhead at the time, we moved on from COVID to continuing our event business for 3 years.. This involved us doing many events at local business such as breweries and restaurants. We also participated in many conventions and successfully raised money for our local Children’s Hospital. This led us to us building a large community within Birmingham and also led to connections for us to locate an investor.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

We met in Middle School and had long talks while walking a 40 minute mile in gym class. This allowed us to become great friends and start sharing hobbies. Our interests evolved over time from video games and movies to eventually D&D and board games. At this point we fight like a married couple but our personalities allow us to thrive and complement each other. Adam is the big dreamer, while Nick helps keep ideas grounded and attainable.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.valhallaboardgames.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/valhallaboardgamecafe
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/valhallaboardgamecafe
• Other: Discord: https://discord.gg/gK4XdvVPK6