Organising a pub quiz in your café: the full playbook
For a café, a pub quiz is one of the few activities that both fills a quiet evening and delivers regular guests. Whoever takes part comes with a group, stays for two hours, and drinks more in those two hours than during a regular visit.
The problem isn't the idea but the execution. Coming up with questions takes time, counting points takes time, and one evening where the count doesn't add up costs you half the participants.
What you need
- A fixed evening. Every week or every other week, always the same day. Irregularity is deadly for turnout.
- Forty to sixty questions, divided over four or five rounds with their own theme.
- Someone who hosts the evening and links the rounds together.
- A way to keep score that nobody doubts.
- A prize that's worth the effort without being expensive.
The setup of an evening that works
Length
An hour and a half to two hours, including breaks. Shorter feels like too little for the effort of coming; longer and the last round plays out in front of a half-empty room.
Rounds
Four or five rounds of ten questions. Vary the difficulty and make sure each round has its own character: general knowledge, music, pictures, something local, and a round that has nothing to do with knowledge such as estimating or guessing.
The local round
This is the round that sets your evening apart from every other pub quiz. Questions about the street, the municipality, the history of the building. Regular guests feel at home and new guests learn something.
The local round is almost always the round that gets the most laughs, and the reason people come back.
Counting points: where it goes wrong
Having guests hand in answers on paper and checking them yourself costs you ten minutes between rounds, and in those ten minutes the energy in the room drops. Moreover, discussion arises as soon as one answer has been marked wrong.
The variant that solves that: guests take part via their own phone and the scores add themselves up. At TablePlay, each table scans the QR code, picks a table name, and the standings appear live. No paper, no checking, no discussion. Check the games to see which quiz variants there are, or the page for cafés to see how that plays out in a café.
The questions themselves
Whoever writes a quiz for the first time almost always makes the same two mistakes: too difficult, and too much factual knowledge. A quiz in which a team gets two out of ten questions right is not a challenge but a humiliation.
The distribution that works
- Two questions that almost everyone gets right. They're there to give the feeling of taking part.
- Six questions you need to think about or can discuss. This is where the fun lies.
- Two questions that almost nobody knows. They determine who wins.
The discussion in the middle is where a pub quiz gets its value from. A question that one person knows and the rest don't doesn't spark a conversation. A question that four people can work out together, does.
Formats that do better than factual knowledge
Estimation questions (how tall, how heavy, how many), picture questions, music clips, and questions where you have to determine an order. They have one thing in common: you can take part without knowing the answer. That keeps teams in the game who would otherwise have dropped out after round two.
Prizes that work
The prize doesn't have to be big; it has to be visible. A round of drinks for the winning table, a voucher for next time, or something on the house. A voucher has one advantage over cash: it brings the team back.
Hosting the evening
A quizmaster doesn't need to be funny, but does need to be clear. What makes an evening run smoothly is almost entirely rhythm:
- Read each question twice, with a pause in between. Reading it once guarantees a hand going up asking you to repeat it.
- Give the same thinking time per question, and state beforehand how long that is.
- Announce the standings after each round. That's the moment the room wakes up a bit.
- Keep the break short. Ten minutes is enough; a quarter of an hour and you've lost half the attention.
The final round
Let the scoring of the final round carry a bit more weight, or hold one round in reserve where teams can wager points. Without that, a team ten points behind after round three is mentally done, and you'll notice it at the bar.
How to fill the first evenings
- Announce it three weeks ahead, not three days.
- Ask your regular guests personally if they'll bring a team. That works better than any poster.
- Put the date on your Google profile and on social media, with a photo of the venue and not a quiz logo.
- Make the first evening easier than you'd like. Anyone who feels they have no chance won't come back.
What it costs and delivers
Count on two to four hours of preparation per evening if you write the questions yourself, plus the evening itself. In return, a quiz night becomes the best-attended weekday evening in most cafés, with higher spending per guest than average because people stay seated longer.
If you want to skip the preparation, check what a ready-made quiz on the table costs at the prices.
How long does a pub quiz last?
An hour and a half to two hours including breaks. Shorter feels like too little for the effort; longer and the last round plays to a half-empty room.
How many questions do you need for a pub quiz?
Forty to sixty, split over four or five rounds of ten each with their own theme.
How do you keep score without hassle?
Checking paper answers takes ten minutes per round and causes discussion. Playing via the phone with automatic scoring removes both.
On which evening is best to hold a pub quiz?
A weekday evening that's currently quiet, usually Tuesday or Wednesday. The goal is to fill an empty evening, not to make a busy evening busier.
What's a good prize for the winners?
Something visible but not expensive: a round of drinks, something from the house, or a voucher. A voucher also brings the team back.
Want to try table games yourself?
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