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So you want to start a Family Entertainment Center business?
Among the many products and services businesses can offer these days, experience is one of the most profitable concepts.
It’s no longer good enough to offer goods and services and call it a day. The four stages of economic progress can be easily understood in the evolution of the humble birthday cake. During the agrarian economy, mothers made cakes from scratch using low-cost farm commodities. In the goods-based economy, moms started paying to buy premixed cake ingredients (from a box). Eventually, during the emergence of the service economy, parents ordered cakes from bakeries, which cost about 10x more than the premixed goods, but included the type of icing and cake decoration mothers could not easily do at home. Enter the experience economy, where time-pressed, overworked parents spend $100 or more to book the entire birthday party at businesses that stage events – the cake is only offered as part of the party package.
The emerging experience economy, according to the Harvard Business Review, is the next competitive battleground when it comes to catering to consumer demands.
A family entertainment center (FEC) is a venue where experiences such as games, attractions, and other activities that appeal to different age groups or families as a whole are offered.
Over the years, FECs have evolved to include a variety of attractions in their facilities as opposed to offering a single type of experience. According to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), these are some qualifiers for establishments to be considered as an FEC:
Must be located within a commercial, tourist, or entertainment complex
Typically do not charge an admission or entrance fee and may or may not be a gated property
Games and attractions usually come as “pay-as-you-go”
Often indoors but can be a combination of indoor and outdoor
Offers a combination of at least three participatory activities (mentioned under Types of Family Entertainment Centers) as well as different types of food concession or service.
Targets a specific age group or market (e.g children’s entertainment center, adults-only entertainment center)
Entering a business in the experience economy means staging experiences that sell. This entails intentionally utilizing services as the stage and goods as the props to engage customers by creating events that make a mark.
FECs can range from the following indoor or outdoor amusement and attraction centers. Depending on what kind of experience you want to offer, here are family entertainment business ideas worth looking into.
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