Yatai

About this board game

Yatai is a board game for 2–4 players that puts you in charge of a Japanese street food stall, with games lasting about 60 minutes. Build an efficient operation while coordinating customers, ingredients, drinks, dishes, and empty bottles.

Each turn uses a 3×2 grid system. Choose the types of actions you want to carry out, then manage how those choices affect your stall. You may add customers, cook food, stock the fridge with drinks, serve dishes, or recycle empty bottles.

Customer and tourist meeples are drawn from a bag to form queues. As queues grow, you add and bump action tiles on your grid, creating a queue-management challenge that rewards careful coordination. Choosing the right actions at the right time is essential for satisfying your customers.

• Cook dishes based on the ingredients you have collected.
• Manage limited facilities, including your refrigerator and bottle recycling capacity.
• Develop your Yatai with cooking plates, a larger refrigerator, new dishes, and improved customer reviews.

The ingredients available to you determine which dishes you can cook, while your limited storage and recycling facilities must be managed throughout the game. Efficient planning helps keep your stall running and your customers satisfied.

With its combination of action selection, queue management, resource handling, and stall development, Yatai offers a focused strategy experience centered on the busy rhythm of Japanese street food service.