Indoor Golf Bar

[mtngirl]

We are seriously considering opening an Indoor Golf Bar, but our business model relies heavily on league play to be profitable. We are in an area where the golf courses open Mid May and close early October. We can still have snow into July as well. There are 5 golf courses in our small town and they each have a men's and women's league with around 30 participants in each, so our idea is to have the club pros organize a winter league to play on our simulators 4 nights a week at least. The F&B sales and guaranteed hours on the machines generated by the leagues would make us a decent profit according to my pro formas.

Does this seem like a reasonable assumption to make? We plan to have 3 simulators, so leagues would be limited to 12 players.

Also any advice from those that own a commercial endeavor would be much appreciated.

THanks!

[andygg1986]

Have you talked to any of the club pros to get their input on if they would be willing to help organize and how many people they think might participate? I think getting 12 out of 30 people at 4 out of 5 courses to commit might be a little ambitious, but it is really hard to say. My concern would be that with such a short season of 4-5 months, outdoor leagues might get a lot of golfers who aren't that serious but want to get out and play while they can. If you position your bar as more of a social spot that also has golf (TVs with sporting events, maybe live music, etc) you might be able to capture those semi-serious golfers attention. Serious golfers will be more likely to participate as long as the simulator hardware is accurate.

The other thing is that 7-8 months is a long time for an indoor league. As fun as simulator golf is, I would be worried people might get tired of it and drop out after a few months. You could break it into several indoor "seasons" but then you have to worry about people signing up several times a year. You could do different format events like the Ryder Cup to try and keep things interesting.

Have you settled on a particular simulator system yet? They can range from $5k to $50k so that will have an impact on how many people have to play to turn a profit too.

[mtngirl]

I appreciate your feedback and your points are very valid. We are going to meet with all of the pros/GMs to discuss the leagues before committing to this plan. There is another community 30 mins away that we will also target and meet with club staff as well, so that could potentially bring in many more players. I think the idea would be to offer 12 week leagues, so there would be 2 sessions rather than committing to a 6 month league. Surprisingly, we have some very talented golfers here since we are a high-income resort area. My husband's league has a 2 time web.com tour winner and a couple of other former PGA tour pros in it.

The space we have in mind is pretty small, so it won't be much more than a golf bar. We will have TVs tuned to the Golf Channel and live sporting events. The location is excellent and is in a building with 2 other very popular restaurant/bars that will drive traffic and supply more food options. In busy periods, the wait for those places can be up to 2 hours, so they could send customers down to us while they wait. I have no adjusted my numbers to include this but it is a big possibility. We own an architecture firm so our bar will be very well designed to make it a cool spot to hang out.

I am worried about the difference between simulator golf and the real thing, and that people will try it once but not enjoy it. Our pricing will be the same as a round at the local clubs and league play will be a little less than what they charge.

My husband is looking at the GSA simulators, not sure the exact model but it is about $15-17k per. I've also figured in the annual software licenses. I would love feed back on GSA products.

[Daddio]

I would not get a GSA, I have one I was using, it is in a box after I got my GC2. I won't even give it away because I don't want to deal with all the set up issues etc.that go with it.

[wbond]

You need to really investigate the GSX to determine if that's what you really want.

[mtngirl]

Is the software glitchy? What issues did you have? We definitely want something that will be easy to use and set up.

[andygg1986]

If you are looking at GSA simulators, I would also look at Protee simulators as they have a very similar hardware setup but more active support. The hardware is around $6k, plus you would need a projector ($1k), computer ($1k), screen ($1k) and the enclosure. The enclosure can vary quite a bit but if you own an architecture firm I'm sure you could design a nice enclosure for around $5k. They are good because they support right/left handed play and are there is no hardware that is in danger of getting hit by a shank or club.

I don't know how much the local clubs cost for a round of golf, but I think most simulator businesses I have seen are around $20-30 for a round. Other ones do hourly rates of about $40/hr. Here is an article saying you can get about half of the rate for a nice municipal course with a cart.

http://www.sportsentertainmentspecialists.com/Commercial/10-things-indoor-golf.html

[mtngirl]

Local rounds start at $35 plus cart for 3 courses, the other 2 are over $100. We are using $35/round for our models. I've seen anywhere from $25 to $100 per round in my research. I would think that people charging less than that are bars that have simulator for entertainment, but not geared to serious golfers. I will check out Protee.

[MainStGolf]

I would say if you have five golf course in your town you are probably not a "small" town - LOL. I started my indoor golf side business a couple of years ago, and thankfully I did not "need" it to be financially viable right away. I really just wanted to get my investment back.

Our struggle is we don't have a large base of potential customers. And most of the golfers in our area have their own carts and store them at the one 9-hole course that we have in town, and they store their clubs on their carts. So getting people to go to the course and take their clubs off their carts and then drive 3 minutes into town has been a big challenge. It just really doesn't happen much at all.

One thing that I have done to add some interest and get people in to play is do a fundraiser tournament for our local high school's golf teams. We did an individual tournament and then we also did a 2-person scramble. You could also do a golf-a-thon with the high school teams if you wanted to.

Another thing is with TGC and/or JNPG there is a possibility to have your home courses recreated so that not only can people play the other famous courses, but they can also play recognizable courses close to home. That makes it fun.

We also have the software that allows you to have putt-putt which is a cool feature. I think there is at least one putting only course on TGC unless more have been developed.

We also offer a lunch special in that people can come use the space over the lunch hour and save some money.

One thing that should help is the ability for you to sell alcohol, which I'm sure you plan on doing as a "bar" and then possibly food as well. That being said two of those types of venues were tried and failed in the "big" city to the west of us, which is the second largest city in Kansas.

Hope you all can make it work. Indoor golf is a load of fun and it still surprises me that I can not get more people through the door.

[wbond]

I would be surprised if you find people willing to pay the same amount for sim golf as they do for the real thing. There have been quite a few sim places around me and their fees are always lower than actual courses along with many posting specials to get people in.

[MainStGolf]

Yeah we charge $15 for an hour of range practice with any of our training aids available for use. We charge $20 per person for a full round of golf. Then we charge $5 for our lunch break special, which is basically 45 minutes of practice from 12-1 on the weekdays.

[mtngirl]

We have less than 10,000 people in our valley, so it's small. There are 4 more courses in the bigger town 30 mins away with a population of less than 20k. That is what we consider our market. Greens fee in the larger town are over $100/round, we are in one of the wealthiest areas of the country. Your experience is what concerns me, that it will be hard to get people to play on a consistent basis. Like you, we are more concerned with recouping our investment than initial profits, and I'm comfortable with it being a loss leader for a year or two. But I don't want to invest my time and energy into a dog that will not be productive over time.

We do have tons of charity events here and would love to host scrambles and tournaments, but I haven't included any of that in my projections since I'm trying to be conservative. We will serve beer/wine and hot dogs, and will also be able to serve wood fired pizzas from the neighboring restaurant. F&B projections are included in my model, and those are also reliant on league play.

[Igor-247-golf]

Talk to people who have owned golf bars

[mtngirl]

That is the point of my post, Igor. I was hoping for some insight from those who've done this.

[triplebogeysrbetter]

(customer view)
I know it's a totally different model, but it seems with Topgolf the food, alcohol, and environment is really what brings people into the doors. Hitting golf balls is almost an after thought.

From a business standpoint maybe build out one sim and see what happens. 3 sim would put you underwater pretty fast. Plus if you did build out the others you would have lessons learned from the first.

"Monday night burgers and skins" "Tuesday tacos and CTTH"

Just my 2 cents.

[MainStGolf]

I think triplebogeysrbetter in that TopGolf is more about the "social" aspect with golf thrown in. I think why it is more popular than sim golf is that to a certain extent it is "real" golf in that you are seeing your ball fly out to the targets, whereas in sim golf while you are playing real equipment you are surrounded by and know that the environment is fake. And it doesn't really matter how realistic the experience is when it's all said and done its a computer game.

What's odd is that I believe it is South Korea there are more people that play sim golf than real golf and golf bars are all over the place.

[triplebogeysrbetter]

Kinda of my point you really need a social aspect to drawn in folks.

You can only cater to regular golfers so much. You really need some millennials (ugh) Generation X guy here. Also, rent out space to area pros for lessons. The youth market is expanding. If there was a cheaper sim studio in my area. There are several non cheap ones. I would've never built out mine. OK OK you caught me in a lie. I would have still build it.

Die hards will play winter golf on the course. I know I do even when its 20 degree. I love having no one on the course.