Yellowknife (Nov 03/04) - It's a cappuccino cafe, a gaming room and a computer repair service.

Frostbyte Cafe is the brainchild of Marcel Charland, Ian Cross, Juan Winsor and Dustin Moore. The partners say they have been chewing on their business idea for five years.

The cafe, which opens today, will have 10 computers available.

Eight will be used for gaming and Internet surfing while another two will be used exclusively for Internet surfing.

The business will also provide wireless access points.

The coffees will be served in a French press, otherwise known as a bodum. There will also be various selections of coffee flavours on hand and snacks prepared by Le Frolic.

The partners looked at several Internet cafe models prior to developing one of their own.

"They have two Internet cafes (in Whitehorse) and we don't have any here," said Charland.

While Charland has been a professional gamer for the past four years, Cross has been working on computers as a hobby for the past 12 years. Winsor is a computer programmer and Dustin Moore has the A+ certification in programming.

The partners went to the Akaitcho Business Development Corporation (ABDC) with the idea and $10,000. After forming a business plan, ABDC provided them with another $40,000.

The plans are to have the cafe and computer repair service open seven days a week from 9:30 a.m. to midnight.

The business will also offer gaming tournaments through on-line computers.

Some of the games the business will offer include Counterstrike and the 2004 version of Unreal Tournament.

The computers use PCI Express graphics cards that run their video games twice as fast as other computers, said Cross.