Our good friends at Eddie Catz posted a fascinating note in a similar (ish) thread a while ago. I hope Maria doesn't mind but I've reproduced it here.
Originally it was a reply to a thread wondering why there wasn't a play cafe on Northcote Road so some of it may seem a little out of context but it's still relevant.
So you don't have to read through the whole post I've pasted the main points about the challenges in running a soft play business here...
Thanks again Maria and I've linked to the previous discussion at the bottom for those who want to read the whole thing.
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Hi
I thought I should maybe add my two cents here. My husband and I own Eddie Catz. We sit on the Board of our industry bodies, we mentor other businesses, we have helped many a failing play operator and and we regularly speak at conferences for start ups. I just thought you may be interested in our perspective.
We have 3 Eddie Catz centres and according to our business plan we should be pretty well off by now. Well this is far from the truth. We are still a small family owned company and we work our guts out, seven days a week. It is rewarding, but this industy is not a goldmine and do consider why others have failed before opening in the same place. Restaurants especially have a high failure rate. An you can also not count on all customers buying more than a coffee. Just a couple of grains of advice of what you will be in store for.....
Dealing with customers - it's no easy feat dealing with customers who, understandably in the current economy, look for high quality facilities and food at a low cost. it is near on impossible to make everyone happy although you do try. You sometimes get emails from customers telling you they are "disgusted" with your prices, which is heart wrenching when you put in hard work. Just to give you a random example of the crazy stuff that happens....we had a customer today about to tuck into a freshly made pizza and another lady's child ran over and gave it a good lick. The mother of the "licker" did not offer to pay for a new pizza and so the customer expected us to provide a fresh one. As you can imagine we ended up with 2 angry customers (they ended up fighting) and had to fork out a free pizza too!
Mucking in - everyone in the family gets pulled in to a business like this - mainly because it is 7 days a week. I would lie if I said we would not have been able to get so far without our parents on both sides pitching in or our kids (now 15 and 13) also helping on weekends. I have facepainted on weekends, pride myself on being one of the best dishwashers on a crazy day and I have been in that Eddie costume so many times that I could scream. I know the owners of Eat, Play, Love and other small local cafe-play spaces and I no doubt echo their thoughts.
Financial committment - all I can advise is do your math. Do your revenue plan and then cut it in half. See if your cashflow can still survive. We took no salries for the first 2 years.
Hidden costs - you need to factor in 20% of revenue going to the VAT man, rent, business rates, salaries, cost of consumables, not to mention uniform, staff training, first aid training, a PRS license, a waste disposal contract and so on. A profitable business is not easily achieveable. Do this before committing to your lease and business loans as you will no doubt have to guarantee both.
Good luck
Maria J.
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